Newsletter - December 15, 2009
CONTENTS
Welsh parish register found after 75
years
Do you have
Scottish ancestry?
The chequered history of tartans
Missing from the census?
WW1 service records complete - at last
Will the
1939 National Register finally be released?
Please help yourself!
Linking up with cousins old and new
Some Christmas present suggestions
No subscription price increase
Findmypast offers 14-day trial
Your opinion
counts!
Who
Do You Think You Are? up for sale
Photo clues from number plates
New South Wales immigrant records online
How to add this newsletter to your
'favourites'
Peter's
Tips
Have
you tried….?
Stop Press
To visit the main LostCousins site please go to www.LostCousins.com or click here if you need a password reminder. It's free to join LostCousins, so if you've been sent this newsletter (or a link to this newsletter) by someone else, I hope you'll register in your own right - and take part in the great LostCousins project.
If you missed the previous LostCousins newsletter (dated 19/11/09), or would like to see it again, click here. All newsletters since February 2009 are still available online, and because each links to the one before you can easily step back through all of them.
Welsh parish register found after 75 years
A register from the parish of Llandeilo Graban which went
missing in 1935 has mysteriously resurfaced and been handed to Powys Archives
for safekeeping, according to a news article on the
BBC website. Because the register records baptisms, marriages, and burials from
1669-1812 it could enable some researchers to add several generations to their
tree - let's hope that this isn't the last missing register to turn up.
Do you have Scottish ancestry?
There's a great new site that neatly complements the excellent Scotlandspeople site. Scotlandsplaces has hundreds of
thousands of photographs, plus Farm Horse Tax Rolls from the late 18th century,
and Land Ownership Commission records from 1872-73 - and as far as I can see,
it's all free!
Records from the 1881 Scotland census are currently under-represented at LostCousins, so if you have Scottish ancestry please add as many entries as possible to your My Ancestors page. Note that if you're using Ancestry the census references are scattered about the transcription: the three items you need to note are the Registration Number, which appears after the birthplace; the Enumeration District (shown as ED), which appears below the occupation; and the Page, which is hidden away near the bottom, in the Source Citation section.
The chequered history of tartans
I was fascinated to read an article by Chris Paton
in the December issue of Your Family Tree in which he explained
that the concept that everyone with a Scottish surname belongs to a particular clan,
and is entitled to wear a particular tartan, is little more than a myth (comparable,
perhaps with the belief held by some that having a particular English surname entitles
one to a coat of arms?).
Surnames weren't used in the Scottish Highlands until the 17th century, and whilst at that point many clan members adopted the name of the chief, that didn't always happen: sometimes sub-groups would use a different surname, retaining a separate identity whilst remaining under the protection of the chief. To complicate matters still further, the same surname could be held by members of different clans - and that's one reason why the links between surnames and tartans are so tenous. Another is that modern designs for tartans have largely been derived from a book (Vestiarium Scoticum) that is generally regarded to have been a 19th century forgery by two brothers who falsely claimed descent from Bonnie Prince Charlie.
Missing from the census?
In most cases, people who seem to be missing from the census are merely misrecorded or mistranscribed - but it's important to be
aware that there are parts of some censuses that have been lost over time.
Fortunately there's a useful list of the missing sections of the 1841, 1861,
and 1871 censuses on the findmypast site, and you don't need to be a subscriber
to see it - click here to go direct to
the relevant page (the list is halfway down the page, in the section headed
'known issues').
WW1 service records complete - at last
Ancestry has at long last finished digitising the surviving service records for British soldiers who served in the Great
War. Many of the records were lost as a result of enemy action in WW2, but nevertheless
the career records for over 2 million have survived. The amount of information
varies, but the average is 16 pages per individual, and typically includes date
and place of birth, next of kin, medical records, as well as dates and places
in which the soldier served.
Will the 1939 National Register finally be released?
3 years ago I applied under the Freedom of Information Act to inspect
the register created under the National Registration Act of 1939. Although the information
recorded in 1939 was far less extensive than in any census, because the 1931
census was destroyed by enemy action in WW2, and there was no census taken in
1941, even limited information could be invaluable to researchers.
Although my request was rejected, an appeal to the Information Commissioner was upheld - or would have been, had not the records been transferred in April 2008 from the Office of National Statistics to the NHS Information Centre (as you may know, the 1939 register was used as the basis for the NHS Central Register, when the health service was founded in 1948).
I succeeded in obtaining my own record from the NHS register under the Data Protection Act (they even waived the £10 fee), but the NHS refused to provide access to the 1939 register, citing a long list of - in my opinion - spurious concerns. Whilst I have not had the time to follow this up, a more determined campaigner than I - Guy Etchells - appealed to the Information Commissioner in respect of his own request and won! It now seems possible that access will be allowed to the records of people who are now deceased (the majority of those recorded, given that anyone recorded in 1939 would be at least 70 years old by now).
The bad news is that unless it is decided to scan and digitise the information - as has been done for the 1911 Census, which was released early thanks to an earlier campaign by Guy Etchells - it may be prohibitively difficult and expensive to obtain data. You may recall that after the initial decision in respect of the 1911 Census the National Archives charged £45 per household for copies of the census schedules - almost as much as findmypast now charges for a whole year's virtually unlimited access!
Please help yourself!
The premise behind LostCousins is that the best person to help you is a researcher who shares your ancestors. That's why if you write
to me asking for help, the first thing I do is check that you've completed your
My Ancestors page - because without
that information you can't be matched which the other members are your cousins.
Furthermore, until you complete your My
Ancestors page your cousins won't be able to find you!
I really enjoy helping and advising members, and so do the 'buddies' - but it would clearly be unfair to the members who are participating in the LostCousins project if we devoted our time to helping members who aren't taking part.
Please enter relatives from all of your family lines, not just the ones
you're currently focusing on - because your cousins might need your help unravelling problems that you've already solved. In other words,
don't simply think about "How can my cousins help me?", but also
"How can I help my cousins?".
Linking up with cousins old and new
Every relative you enter on your My Ancestors page is a potential link to
a new cousin, and the more relatives you enter, the more cousins you'll find.
Remember that whilst it's the England & Wales 1881 census where we have the
greatest coverage, you can also enter relatives from the Scotland 1881, US
1880, Canada 1881, and England & Wales 1841 censuses.
Tip: the relatives most likely to lead to new cousins aren't the
direct ancestors you've found on the census, but their brothers, sisters, and
cousins
Even if you haven't found any 'lost cousins' yet, your My Cousins page shouldn't be empty - because you can link to existing cousins really easily. To link to a known cousin who is already a LostCousins member, click Add a known cousin at the top right of your My Cousins page. To link to a known cousin who hasn't yet joined visit your My Referrals page and use the Refer a Relative option.
Tip: you don't have to provide an email address in order to refer a
friend or relative to LostCousins (but even if you do, I won't add them to my
mailing list unless they choose to join - I value my own privacy, and so I
respect the privacy of others)
Some Christmas present suggestions
Around this time of the year I get phone calls from anxious relatives
wondering what on earth they should buy me for Christmas (at least they have
realised that I have enough socks and handkerchiefs for a lifetime!). Should
you find yourself in the same position, here are a few suggestions, all of them
things that I've bought for myself in the past, and can therefore wholeheartedly
recommend:
- a subscription to a one of the many excellent genealogy magazines published in the UK, such as Your Family Tree, Ancestors, or Who Do You Think You Are?
- a subscription to findmypast, Ancestry, or LostCousins
- a family tree program: the one I use most is Genopro, because as you may be able to tell from the snippet below it gives me all the control I need over the layout of my family tree, whether I'm printing it out or looking at it on-screen - get a 14-day free trial AND a 10% discount when you click here (there are discounts for multiple purchases - if you club together with friends to buy 2 or more copies you'll save a minimum of 25%!).
- an original newspaper that marks an important date, from Historic Newspapers (save 10% until Dec 31 when you enter the code XMAS09H)
- last, but by no means least, chocolates from Hotel Chocolat (or a trial subscription to their Tasting Club - which was how I started!).
No subscription price increase
Although many subscriptions have gone up, there will once again be no
increase in LostCousins subscriptions, which since 2005 have remained at £10
(about $16), for a 12 month single subscription or £12.50 (about $20) for a
joint subscription. I note that over the same period Genes Reunited has put up
its subscription from £7.95 for 12 months to £9.95 for just 6 months, an
increase of 150%!
I don't want anyone to be forced to pay a subscription, and that's why between Christmas and New Year the LostCousins site will be totally free (as in previous years). However, without the valuable contributions of those members who do pay a subscription it wouldn't be possible to keep the site going, so I'd like to thank all of you for your support.
Another important factor is the income we receive from advertisers - and so I'd like to remind you that whether or not you pay a subscription you can still contribute to LostCousins by clicking on one of the adverts on the website (or in this newsletter) before making a purchase.
Tip: whether you are a subscriber or not, make sure that your My Ancestors page is as complete as possible before
the free period begins so that even if you're too busy to log-in, your cousins
will still be able to find you.
Findmypast offers 14-day trial
For some years Ancestry has offered a 14 day free trial - now
findmypast has stepped into line with a 14 day free trial of its
own (though unfortunately - but perhaps unsurprisingly - the 1911 Census is
excluded). I don't think it's a coincidence that this change of heart coincides
with the completion of findmypast's census collection - the last few counties
of the 1851 Census have now been added, so they are now the only site with a
complete set of England & Wales censuses from 1841-1911.
While you're at findmypast take a look at how the site has changed - from memory it's the first major revamp since they dropped the 1837online name.
Your opinion counts!
You may have read that the takeover of Genes Reunited by Brightsolid,
the firm that runs the Scotlandspeople and findmypast sites, has been put on
hold while the Competition Commission investigates whether or not it is in the
best interests of consumers. The great and the good of the genealogy world have
been invited to comment (they even asked me!), but the commission are also
inviting input from members of the public. See this announcement
on the Competition Commission website for further details.
Who Do You
Think You Are? up for sale
Shed Media, the parent of Wall to Wall - the production company that
makes the phenomenally successful Who Do
You Think You Are? series - has received a
takeover offer according a report
in Monday's Guardian.
Photo clues from number plates
Some family albums include photographs of motor
vehicles, and if the registration number is visible it may be possible to
deduce when - and, perhaps, where - the photograph was taken. There's an article
about UK registration numbers at Wikipedia which gives general guidance, but
for more specific information I recommend the Old Classic
Car website, which will give a good idea of when and where the registration
was issued.
(My first vehicle was a Lambretta Li150 scooter, registration 279 TEV, which I
bought second-hand for just £20. I see that restored examples can now fetch
over £5000 - what a shame my mother gave mine to the dustmen!)
New South Wales immigrant records online
The NSW state archives are already a mine of valuable information, but
now they have become even more useful with the digitisation of 19th century
records of immigrants. Although it is only a pilot project, and only a fraction
of the passenger lists have so far been digitised, I am hopeful that the decision
will be taken to digitise the remaining records. To search the 1839-96 Assisted
Migrants Index click here; links
to the records digitised so far can be found here.
How to add
this newsletter to your 'favourites'
You may have noticed that the web address (or
URL) for this newsletter is the same as for the previous edition (and the one
before) - indeed, from now on the latest newsletter will always be on the same
web page. That's because I don't want you to have to wait for my email to
arrive to read the newsletter - you can check the page at any time to see
whether there's a new edition, or an update to the existing edition (in which
case it will be under Stop Press).
Why not add the newsletter page to your
'favourites'? To do this using Internet Explorer click on Favourites, then Add to
favourites (if you have the latest version of IE you can simply click 
to add a link to your toolbar). To create a
new bookmark in Firefox click 
Peter's Tips
The aim of my tips column is to save you money
on necessities so that you have more to spend researching your family history
tree. After all, it's getting more and more expensive - though to be fair, in
most cases we get a lot more for our money than we used to (I can remember when
my Ancestry subscription bought me just one
census, and when findmypast didn't offer any
subscription option). Inevitably most of the tips will only be of relevance to
British readers, because I live in Britain - but I'll gladly print tips sent in
by overseas readers.
It's said that 97% of British drivers believe that their driving is better than average. Could a similar phenomenon explain why 97% of the British readers of this newsletter haven't yet checked their gas and electricity bills at the Which?Switch site, I wonder?
If you get your gas from British Gas or your electricity from your local supplier, then you're almost certainly paying far more than you need to - possibly hundreds of pounds more (the average saving made by consumers who switch is as much as £263 a year). Even if you've switched in the past, the chances are that the tariff you're on is no longer the best available. With the temperature hovering around freezing here in Britain, and with colder weather on the way, now would be a great time for to discover some long-lost cousins in Australia - but if you are going to have to stay here, why pay more than you need to for light and heat?
What could be more English than tea? Those generous people at Tesco are giving 50 bonus Clubcard points (worth up to £2.00) with certain packs including Finest Earl Grey (50 tea bags for £1.39, and highly recommended), and Finest Darjeeling (50 for £1.29), which means that the tea ends up costing less than nothing! Note that some stores limit bulk purchasers to 6 of any one item, although other stores have higher limits.
Have you tried….?
I've
been experimenting with Google Picasa 3.6, a FREE program for organising
photographs. I'm still finding my way around, but I've already discovered a
very useful feature for family historians: the ability to put names to faces,
and - here's the clever bit - once you've done this, Picasa will automatically
search for the same person in other photos! The automatic recognition works
best when the subjects are facing forwards, but you've always got the option of
identifying people manually.
You can also tag photos in other ways, so you could use Picasa for organising your holiday snaps. It doesn't matter if your photos are scattered across different directories - or even different drives, Picasa can find them and index them (it even discovered some photos I thought I had lost!).
Christmas could be a good time to sort out your photos - especially if you have family around you. It's amazing how photographs can bring back long-forgotten memories! Picasa 3.6 is compatible with all recent versions of Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7); click here to download it.
Stop Press
This is where updates or amendments will
appear.
That's all for now - I hope you've found some of it relevant to you and your family tree. Please do keep sending in your comments and suggestions for future issues.
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
Copyright 2009 by Peter Calver & Lost Cousins Ltd except as otherwise stated