LostCousins newsletter 19 Feb 2011

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 5th February 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; in due course there will be an online index to articles.

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 the link seems not to work look for a warning message at the top of the browser window).

Although these newsletters are hosted at LostCousins, they are not part of the main website. Click here to go to the main website and take part in the LostCousins project to link relatives around the world.

Stash in the attic

Regular readers of my newsletter will know that I tend to hoard things - programmes, ticket stubs, menus etc (I think the appropriate term is ephemera) - that will serve as a reminder of things that I've done or seen should I ever come to write my autobiography. Many people would consider them to be junk but to me they are precious mementos - and I've recently realised that this habit is one that I inherited from my parents.

When I was about 8 years old I drew a charcoal and chalk picture of my primary school's Sports Day. Even then it was abundantly clear that I was no artist, but there was something about the picture that impressed my teacher, and so it was put on the corridor wall for all to see. Over the course of the next 50 years I often wondered what had happened to that picture, but when I found out a few years ago that the school hadn't even kept the attendance registers from the 1950s I go up all hope of ever seeing it again.

A couple of years ago I was visiting my father (he was still living at home then) and decided to look for a book - Kelly's 1937 Street Directory of Ilford - that I could remember from my childhood. I couldn't find on the bookshelves (and there are many of them in my father's house), but Dad was convinced that he still had the book somewhere, so I decided to take a look in the loft. As it turned out there weren't any boxes of books in the loft, but what I did find there was even more exciting - a carton in which my parents had kept some of the schoolwork that my sister, brother, and I had done many decades before.

Can you guess what I found in that carton? Yes - amazingly it was my 'Sports Day' drawing, very crumpled, slightly torn, and somewhat faded, but nevertheless everything that I remembered.

Recently I went through the collection again and noticed one or two things that I hadn't looked at very closely the first time round, including an essay titled "All About Myself" which I wrote at the age of 7, and represents my first - and so far last - attempt at an autobiography. It's full of little details that I'd forgotten, such as the precise time of my birth, and the fact that when my mother was giving birth to my sister I stayed with my Auntie Margaret (I was only two and a half at the time, so it's hardly surprising I'd forgotten that).

Another interesting item was a little booklet that I'd created, presumably as part of a school project, which was entitled "Things we use in School". On the last page there was a drawing of a book called The Land Where Tales Are Told by Stella Mead - a book that I still have no recollection of, although according to my own words "I always read my reading book when I have nothing to do". However a second-hand copy of the 1954 edition arrived in the post yesterday morning thanks to Abebooks, so once again I'll be reading it "when I have nothing to do".

There are so many TV programmes that show people selling the things they've inherited, usually for appallingly small sums, but for me the mementoes of decades long past have a value beyond price. After all, how can we criticise others for destroying censuses, school records, hospital records, and the rest if we don't appreciate the items that our forebears kept?

Do you have things in your attic that have been preserved for decades? I wonder what memories they will bring back for you? And if you're reaching the point in your life when the survival of those mementoes will soon depend on others, what provision have you made to ensure that they live on?

Wildcards - the key to successful searches

80% of the people reading this newsletter don't need me to tell them how useful wildcards can be. This article is aimed at the other 20%, the people who have never used wildcards, or who haven't yet realised how important they are in overcoming errors and inconsistencies in data.

We now know, thanks to the 1911 Census, that enumerators and transcribers aren't the only people who made mistakes - often our own ancestors got the details wrong. With all these opportunities for errors it's not surprising that some researchers get better results than others when searching the censuses and other records - and a prime factor is whether nor not wildcards are utilised.

What is a wildcard? Anyone who used PCs in the days of DOS will be familiar with the * and ? wildcards which were used to select multiple files, or simply to avoid having to type in a complete filename (and you can still use them even now if you go to the Command Prompt, which you'll probably find under Accessories in the Start menu).

The ? symbol can mean any single character, rather like the blank tile in Scrabble - so a search for P?TER in an online dictionary would return PETER, PATER etc. The * character can stand for any number of characters (even none at all), so a search for P*TER would match not only PETER and PATER, but also PEWTER, PATTER, PORTER etc. It's usually possible to use more than one wild card in a search, thus P*TER* would also match PATERNAL, POSTERIOR and PTERODACTYL.

Are you beginning to realise how wildcards might help you when you're searching for your ancestors? In my own tree I have an ancestor whose surname was KEEHNER - or at least, that's the spelling that family eventually settled on (it probably started in Germany as KUEHNER). His children appear in the baptism register of St Mary Magadalene, Bermondsey under the surnames KEENAR, KUEHNER, KENAH, KIHNIR, and KIHNER, and (as if a further complication were needed) when interpreting the vicar's handwriting the transcribers managed to come up with KILMER, KITNER, KIRCHNER and KCENAR.

Generally I'll search for members of that family by typing in K*N*R as those letters almost always appear (and in that order too). It doesn't guarantee success, but it is a pretty reliable solution - certainly much better than trying to dream up every possible perversion of the name - which is what you would have to do without wildcards.

I know that some people simply untick the 'Exact matches only' box, which removes the need to think about what you're doing - the problem is, you hardly ever get the best results doing things this way, and if you never try using wildcards you won't realise what you're missing.

Tip: when you're deciding which letters to leave in, and which to replace with wildcards, remember that some letters (and letter combinations) are more easily confused than others. For example, 'o' and 'e' often look similar, whilst 'u' and 'n' or 'm' and w' are sometimes confused (depending on the letters around them).

Save 15% on findmypast subscriptions

I'm delighted to say that I've been able to arrange an exclusive discount for readers of this newsletter who take out a new subscription at findmypast between now and midnight (London time) on 6th March. The code COUSINS15 will secure you a 15% discount on any of the current subscriptions, ALL of which now include the 1911 England & Wales census - and if you click here immediately before subscribing you'll not only help to support the LostCousins project to link relatives around the world, you'll also be rewarded with a LostCousins subscription that runs for the same period as your findmypast subscription (worth up to £12.50 on top of the savings from findmypast).

This is what you should see on your screen after entering the discount code; if the discount isn't shown then either you've entered the code incorrectly, or you've forgotten to click Apply:

Note: to claim your free LostCousins subscription please forward me a copy of your email receipt from findmypast so that I can verify your entitlement - the sooner you do this, the sooner your LostCousins subscription will begin. If you are logged-out from findmypast at any point during the process you'll need to click on the link above a second time before logging-in again in order to secure your entitlement.

Choosing between Ancestry and findmypast

I frequently receive emails from members asking which of the sites I'd recommend - and quite frankly there is no simple answer, because whilst there are some overlaps in the information they offer, primarily the censuses and the GRO indexes, most of the other information only appears on one site or the other.

For example: Ancestry have incoming passenger lists, findmypast have outgoing passenger lists. Findmypast have the 1911 census now, but haven't yet transcribed the GRO death indexes; Ancestry have the death indexes, but haven't yet got the 1911 Census (other than the limited information in the enumerator summary books). Ancestry have transcriptions of the Scottish censuses now, but don't have images of the handwritten schedules; findmypast won't have the transcriptions until later in the year, but when they do it's likely they'll also have the images. Ancestry have the London Metropolitan Archives collection of parish registers, which I find very useful because all of my lines passed through London; on the other hand, findmypast have the National Burial Index and the Society of Genealogists collections and will be adding parish registers for the whole of Wales, which should be immensely helpful when I'm researching my wife's tree.

Quite frankly, if you can afford it, the best solution is to subscribe to both sites. But if you can't, then the first thing you should do is check whether you can access Ancestry free at your local library (you probably can, but it would be good to make sure). If you can use Ancestry at the library then it obviously makes sense to choose findmypast at home, because then you'll have access to both sets of data.

Another thing to consider is whether you have come close to exhausting the records for your ancestors at the site you currently subscribe to; in this case if you stick with the same site you'll be largely dependent on new datasets being added, whereas if you switch to the other site you'll have a wealth of new data available to you instantly.

Finally, the way that findmypast and Ancestry treat their loyal subscribers is very different; at findmypast subscribers who chose to renew their subscription automatically get a 20% loyalty discount (see here for full details). By contrast, when Ancestry do offer discounts it's only to new subscribers, or to ex-subscribers who have cancelled. And when it comes to ease of use, over the past couple of years the Ancestry site has become significantly more difficult for experienced researchers to use, whereas findmypast have improved by leaps and bounds over the same period.

Tip: if you switch from one site to another you'll need to modify your search strategy in order to get the greatest benefit. For example, you can search all the censuses by address at findmypast, something you won't be used to if you've just switched from Ancestry. Also, if you possibly can, it's good to overlap the two subscriptions, because with all the new data suddenly available to you, you may well discover some leads that you need to follow up at the original site.

I came, I saw, I googled

It's a long while since I studied Latin at school so I dread looking at records that are in Latin - or at least, I did until recently. Then I discovered that Google have added Latin to the list of languages that they can translate into English - probably not perfectly, but I'm sure the results are a lot better than I could possibly manage!

The poor of London

Because almost all of my ancestors were poor, and lived in London for much of the 19th and early 20th centuries I'm always fascinated by contemporary accounts of London life. You may recall that in previous newsletters I've written about Round About a Pound a Week, a magnificent work by Maud Pember Reeves which records in the minutest detail the trials and tribulations of families in the poorest parts of London around the time of the 1911 Census; recently I started reading London Labour & the London Poor, by Henry Mayhew, which focuses on individuals, particularly those trying to earn a living on the streets of the capital in the mid-19th century.

The Stepney Union Casebooks compiled by Charles Booth in the late 19th century recorded the circumstances and stories of workhouse inhabitants, and knowing that one of my own relatives spent 30 years in a nearby workhouse I have spent a lot of time looking through them - they are held in the London School of Economics archives (as are the papers of Maud Pember Reeves) and can be read online. Click here to re-read my article from last September which has links to the LSE site.

Booth went on to produce a map of London on which he highlighted streets in different colours depending on their inhabitants, ranging from black for the lowest class to yellow for the wealthiest. You'll find the maps online at the LSE site, but I find it easier to work from printed copies that I bought from Old House Books (who have quite an interesting range of reproduction street maps and railway maps - all of which seem to be cheaper at Amazon than on their own website). Locating streets on old maps of London is difficult, because there usually isn't an index - and so I always have by me a facsimile of the 1938 London A-Z which includes an index of over 2000 streets that had changed their names.

Essex libraries offer answers

I've recently written about Info Disk 2002, which has a nearly complete copy of the Electoral Roll for 2001 - which was before electors had the option to remove their name from the lists provided to commercial organisations. Although I was lucky to pick up the program on eBay a few years ago there are no copies on sale there at the moment, so I was delighted to learn that Essex Libraries have a copy which is held by Answers Direct, their central enquiry service. I'm told that whilst they provide the service primarily for those who live or work in Essex they wouldn't turn anyone away…

Note: other versions of Info Disk, especially those that were given away on magazine cover disks, may not have the same features - I can only recommend the version I myself use. Why does the 2002 disk have a nearly complete version of the Electoral Roll, rather than a complete version? Because it was possible for users of the 192.com website to request exclusion - as I did at the time.

How will cutbacks affect researchers?

Since most of us can't afford subscriptions to more than one of the major websites, a common solution is to subscribe to findmypast at home, but access Ancestry at the local library (though I'm always surprised how many members are unaware that they can do this). I have been concerned recently that councils anxious to make savings in the cost of providing library services might cancel their subscription to Ancestry Library Edition - so I have been making enquiries.

The good news is that services that are well-used, as Ancestry undoubtedly is, are the ones least likely to be affected by cutbacks - indeed, one county I spoke to had just renewed their Ancestry subscription for a further 12 months. The more use we make of libraries and archives the less likely it is that they will be closed -

More good news comes from Devon, where representations from users have encouraged Devon County Council to reduce the level of cutbacks in their archive services by over one-third, and also to commit to keeping the North Devon Record Office open.

Free parking at the National Archives

Over a year ago it was announced that parking charges of £5 per day would be introduced for visitors to the National Archives, but the implementation was delayed for technical reasons. However it has now been revealed that although those technical problems have been resolved, a reassessment of TNA's financial position has enabled the free parking to continue for at least another year. Of course, for many members it will still be cheaper (and better for the environment) to take the train - but no matter how you plan to get there, the important thing is to go!

Have you kept your New Year resolutions?

In the newsletter that I circulated on New Year's Eve I proposed 11 resolutions for family historians. I wonder how many of them you have kept? Click here to read the original article and remind yourself how you can be a better family historian (and a better cousin) in 2011.

Who will take over your research?

It's inevitable that each of us will one day reach a point when we can no longer continue our research, whether through incapacity or death, and whilst we all know how important it is to make a will, it's all too easy to forget about one of our greatest assets, the family history research that we've compiled over many years of earnest endeavour.

We don't all have someone younger and fitter who can take over the reins and continue our research, but there's always someone who we can trust to safeguard the research for the benefit of future generations. Often there will be a relative that we can pass our research to - but that's not the only option, because local archives, family history societies, and even the Society of Genealogists might be interested.

Of course, nobody knows their way around your family tree like you do, and that's one reason why it's important that we record the sources of the information we collect, whether it's a primary source (such as a census page or a parish register entry) or a secondary source (such as a relative or a transcription). After all, you wouldn't want to do what the great mathematician Fermat did, when he wrote in the margin of a mathematical book that he had a proof of the conjecture printed there, but that it was too large to fit in the margin (it was to be 358 years before Fermat's Last Theorem would finally be proved by the Cambridge mathematician Andrew Wiles).

For many of us the most practical solution is probably to write a letter to our executors recording what we would like to happen to our research, and to keep a copy with our will - but if any of you have a better solution please pass it on, so that I can share it with other members.

Tip: remember to complete the box on your My Details page labelled 'My Beneficiary'; this is where you can enter the email address of the person you would like to take over your LostCousins account when the time comes (there is no charge for this service)

Remember the living

Jenny wrote from Australia with a piece of advice that's not only relevant to beginners, but also to those of us who have made contact with so many living relatives that we have trouble keeping track of them all:

"Start with the living and record your research - all the other records relating to deceased relatives will still be there (and probably more added to them) when you have time to get to them."

Tip: you can add a Note to each entry on your My Cousins page - it's a useful way to remind yourself of how you're connected; to create a new note or edit an existing note click on your relative's name.

Are your cousins struggling to find you?

Half the complimentary emails I receive from readers of this newsletter are from members who aren't taking part in the LostCousins project, or who have only entered a handful of relatives.

If you're one of them please think of your cousins, who may have spent an hour or more entering their data in the hope of finding you. Nothing I can do will bring you together - only you can make that vital difference.

Tip: it takes between 1 and 2 minutes to enter an entire household from the 1881 Census, so if you have 1000 relatives on your tree it will take about an hour to enter everyone from 1881.

Memories of wartime Britain

Although ration books and identity cards were still in use when I was born, I was too young to remember anything about them - apart from the fact that my mother once told me that I got an extra egg because I was so young.

So I was fascinated to discover that it was possible to buy a collection of replica documents that bring home what it must have been like for children during the war - and I certainly wasn't disappointed when they arrived in the post, because there were 16 different items for just £5.98 (postage included). As a subscriber to Boy's Own Paper in the late 50s and early 60s, I was fascinated to open up a reduced size facsimile of the December 1944 edition and see a picture of Stanley Matthews, one of my footballing heroes - how amazing to imagine that half a century later I would not only meet him but kick a ball around with him!

So pleased was I with that first purchase that I ordered another pack, this time containing a second collection, one of documents related to the Blitz - also good value at £5.18 (but if I had to recommend just one it would be the first pack).

Forest fire quenched

Personally I'm delighted the government have abandoned their proposals to transfer the nation's heritage forests to charities and sell off commercial woodlands to the private sector, not least because when we're in the middle of the worst recession since the 1930s it just doesn't seem that it should be so high on the agenda. But I am also saddened by the thought that of the million people who signed the petition I mentioned in my last newsletters, it's likely that only a handful will have read - or even glanced at - the consultation document. I hope that LostCousins members who signed the petition - or made a conscious decision not to - did so on the basis of their own research, and not what journalists wrote (or, indeed, what I wrote).

After all, it was because journalists fanned the flames that we had a scare about the MMR vaccine - one which ultimately cost the lives of some of the young children we, as a society, have a responsibility to protect. But it's not an exclusively modern phenomenon - on my bookshelf there is a copy of the Charles Mackay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds , a work first published in 1841 (the year of the first British census top record everyone by name), but which still has many lessons for us today.

A frog in the throat

Staying with 1841 for a moment, have you ever wondered about the origin of the term 'a frog in the throat'? Nicola sent me this lovely press cutting from the Derby Mercury of 8th September 1841. I have never been a great fan of watercress, except in soup, and after reading that article I don't think I ever will be!

Note: Henry Mayhew writes about a watercress seller in the book I mentioned earlier: "The little watercress girl, although only eight years of age, had entirely lost all childish ways, and was, indeed, in thoughts and manner a woman. There was something cruelly pathetic in hearing this infant, so young that her features had scarcely formed themselves, talking of the bitterest struggles of life, with the calm earnestness of one who had endured them all."

Using the 'Historical Research' category

Recently I dug out a photograph album that I bought at auction many years ago. At the time I was unable to identify who the album had belonged to, or indeed to make much sense at all of the photo captions, but I was hopeful that with all the new records that have become available online it would be possible to start making headway.

Indeed, I very soon managed to track down some of the family members on the censuses - but that left me with a conundrum, how could I get in touch with their living relatives? Then I remembered the 'Historical Research' option, which allows LostCousins members to enter people who are not in away related to them (or even to each other) - and I'm now looking forward to sharing those photographs.

Tip: only enter someone on your My Ancestors page who isn't a relative of yours if you have information that would be of interest to a descendant of that person, or if you have a reasonable expectation that the other person might have information of interest to you.

Peter's tips

First, a reminder that you've got just 6 weeks to buy stamps before the prices soar on 4th April. The price of First and Second class stamps for standard items weighing up to 100g will rise by 5p to 46p (a 12.2% increase) and 4p to 36p (12.5%) respectively, whereas the cost of a Large Letter stamp will rise by 9p to 75p (13.6%) for First Class items and 7p to 58p (13.7%) for Second Class mail. These are enormous percentage increases when you consider how low interest rates are - so if you are planning to send Christmas cards this year it makes sense to buy the stamps now. Indeed, if you could predict how many letters and cards you were going to send for the rest of your life it would make sense to buy them ALL now, because this year's increase certainly won't be the last.

If you've so far resisted the temptation to subscribe to The Oldie, which is one of the most interesting and amusing magazines I read each month, you might be interested in an amazing offer - you can get 3 issues for just £1 when you click here (offer ends 31st March). Considering that the cover price is £3.75 that is an amazing bargain. Although you won't find a section in The Oldie that's dedicated to family history, the book reviews and articles frequently cover topics of interest to family historians like you and me - and I reckon that 90% of the articles are well worth reading, which is better ratio than most other periodicals. But for me, the biggest bonus of subscribing is the opportunity to attend the renowned Literary Lunches, which are held in London, at Simpson's in the Strand. There I've both listened and spoken to figures as renowned and diverse as John Prescott, Tony Benn, John Julius Norwich, and most recently Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, who wrote Tony Hancock's best scripts.

Sometimes when I'm in the middle of buying something online I have to tick a box to say that I've read the Terms and Conditions - but when I click the link for the Terms and Conditions they pop up in a small window that doesn't have a menu, which prevents me from printing them out - or does it? I realised eventually that I could print out the contents of any browser window simply by pressing Ctrl-P (hold down the Ctrl key and press P), and now I feel quite embarrassed about not figuring this out before - but I thought I'd pass on the tip anyway, just in case anyone else suffers from this 'blind spot'.

Stop Press

This is where any corrections or updates will be shown.

That's all for now - I hope you've found my newsletter interesting. Many of the articles are inspired by you, the members, so please do keep writing in with your thoughts, comments, and suggestions.

peter_signature

Peter Calver

Founder, LostCousins