Newsletter - 23 January 2011

The price of leaving it too late

One member's viewpoint

Serial killer's DNA sought

30-year embargo cut to 20 years

Do you have Scottish ancestry?

Free information from the Electoral Roll

Getting the most from FreeBMD

Family history is good for you!

International Reply Coupons to expire

How to send money overseas

Facebook security scare

Is findmypast's loss your gain?

Me and Robbie Burns

How reliable are certificates?

Is it legal to photocopy certificates?

We're number 2 so we try harder!

Peter's Tips

Stop Press

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 8 January 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 - 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.

The price of leaving it too late

I'm sure you read the story of Carlina White who was stolen as a very young baby, but who through her instinct and tenacity managed to trace her real parents at the age of 23 - it was a really heart-warming story, and one that in some respects echoes stories I've heard from LostCousins members who were adopted at an early age. What you might not have noticed is that at the time Carlina was stolen New York City paid compensation of $750,000, most of which was put into a trust fund which would have gone to Carlina had she been found before she reached the age of 21 (in 2008). I don't know what happened to the money, but it seems that Carlina won't be getting it - what a shame she didn't start her investigations a little earlier!

Many of us wish that we'd started researching my family tree earlier - I know I do. But though there's nothing we can do to change the past, the future is entirely in our hands! Whilst the written records that have survived become more accessible day by day (thanks to the work of volunteer transcribers and organisations like FamilySearch, Ancestry, and findmypast), sadly the living memories of our relatives are disappearing as they pass away or develop one form or another of dementia. Those memories, especially the ability to recall childhood stories or to recognise still older generations in photographs have a value that cannot be measured in gold or silver - it is beyond price.

Yet so often there is something that holds us back from contacting people. Isn't it ironic that the longer we leave it the harder it is to make the first move? Make 2011 the year when you contact the relatives you haven't been in touch with for years, when you make that extra effort to find an address or a telephone number, when you finally complete your My Ancestors page so that you have a real chance of finding 'lost cousins', and - more importantly - they have a fair chance to find you!

Two weeks ago I almost expelled a member who told me that - whilst she had thousands of relatives on her tree, and had traced her ancestors back through several centuries - she had no wish to search for living relatives, even though that would enable her cousins to share in the wonderful discoveries she had made over many years of research. Surely somebody who feels that way has no right to benefit from my newsletters, or the one-to-one help and advice I offer to members who are taking part in the LostCousins project to link relatives across the globe (several of whom must be her 'lost cousins)?.

And yet I held back, mindful of the story in the Bible of the prodigal son, and realising that each one of us has the ability to change the way that we behave….

One member's viewpoint

"I have been researching my family tree for just over twelve months. Unfortunately, it was the death of my Grandmother that sparked my interest. As I stood in the front of the church to welcome those who had come to pay their last respects, I was rather embarrassed at the number of people I didn't know.

"As part of the funeral service, I put together a short Powerpoint presentation consisting of a number of photos of my Grandmother throughout her life. While searching through these photos to decide which ones to use, I found a few faces that no-one knew the names of. So I began to do a little research into the family surnames. I am fortunate in that many of my ancestors were German immigrants to South Australia, and the Germans generally liked to know where everyone fitted in. I appear in the Schilling, Pech, Henschke, Heinrich, and Hueppauff family history books. However, no-one in my family knew very much about my British ancestors.

"So I decided to start with my surname, Crambrook, naively believing that there would not be many of them around. I contacted all of the family that shared those ancestors, and found that a few years ago, someone had put together a fairly rough family tree, that started with John William Crambrook and his wife Caroline Georgiana Chibnall, who lived in Kent, England. Since starting my research, I have been able to add two generations to the family, and a great number of people.

"Having done this, I started gathering every mention of anyone with the surname 'Crambrook' or any variant I can find, all over Britain and beyond, and have been trying to piece together the whole family throughout the centuries. I find it fascinating finding out who the Crambrooks were, what they did, where and how they lived. I would encourage anyone who is at all interested in their family and where they came from, to start a little research. Ask questions of your living relatives. Sit down with them over a cup of tea, and have a chat. As I have found, the difficulty of the task of piecing together your family history is compounded when they are no longer around to question.

"I would also encourage everyone to write their own 'Obituaries.' When we were writing my Grandmother's, we found it extremely difficult to separate the fact from the fiction. The same story was interpreted differently by my mother and her sister, and neither of them was completely certain what actually happened. And unfortunately, the fact that we were writing her obituary meant that we could not ask my Grandmother herself. If you write down everything about yourself, everything that you have ever done, then people in 50, 100, or more years will be able to know where they came from, and how they got there."

Many thanks to 19 year-old Ian Crambrook in Australia, who wrote this article, and is quite possibly the youngest active member of LostCousins - in my opinion he is destined for great things!

Serial killer's DNA sought

Scientists in Australia are hoping to obtain a DNA sample from a relative of Frederick Deeming (born in Ashby-de-la-Zouch in Leicestershire) who murdered two wives and four children before being caught and hung in Melbourne, Australia. According to the BBC news report he had 10 siblings, but what it doesn't tell you in the report is that the family moved all over the country, and some of the other children were born in counties as far apart as Kent, Lancashire, and Warwickshire.

Do let me know if you're related to this rogue - who at one time was even suspected of being Jack the Ripper. Apparently because of his notoriety some of his relatives changed their name to Bailey (his mother's maiden name), which could make it a little harder for you to recognise a connection.

30-year embargo cut to 20 years

The 30-year rule that restricts access to official records is to be amended, and the period cut to 20 years. The change will occur over a ten year period from 2013 onwards, with two years records being released to the National Archives each year, rather than one. At the same time more bodies are going to be subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

Whilst there are relatively small changes so far as family historians are concerned, there are at least steps in the right direction. Let's hope that it will make them more receptive to my suggestion that health and other personal records should be retained for longer, rather than being destroyed after - in some cases - as little as 8 years.

Do you have Scottish ancestry?

There was good news this week for anyone with Scottish ancestry - when announcing their plans for 2011 findmypast revealed that they will be adding the Scotland censuses to the findmypast site. If they become part of the existing subscription packages, as I hope they will, this will be a great improvement for anyone who currently buys credits to view the censuses at the Scotlandspeople site.

What it didn't say in the announcement is whether findmypast will have the census images, as well as the transcriptions. Currently Ancestry has transcriptions, but not images - and whilst findmypast would no doubt like to have both, there's no guarantee that they'll have any more success than Ancestry did (though the fact that their parent company manages the Scotlandspeople website might just help).

Free information from the Electoral Roll

If you're trying to track down someone who lives in the UK the Electoral Roll is a great source of information - with two provisos. One is that since 2002 voters have been able to opt out from the version of the Electoral Roll that is made available to commercial organisations, which means that there's a chance the person you're looking for won't be listed - typically the people who opt out are the same ones whose phone numbers are ex-directory (ie unlisted).

The other problem is that it can be very expensive to access the Electoral Roll online, especially if you want information from an earlier edition. The first company to put the Electoral Roll online was 192.com, and in the early years the site would be free around Christmas time, which I found very useful. Sadly that doesn't happen any more, but I have discovered that it's often possible to get useful information from free searches at 192.com - if you use a little ingenuity.

For example, suppose you were looking for Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister, who maintained a house in Islington even while he was living at 10 Downing Street. If you type in his name and specify London one of the results that pops up is an Anthony C Blair who living in London with Nicholas J Blair, Euan A Blair, Kathryn H Blair, Cherie Booth, and Jacqueline L Goulding (which, as you probably know, is the right household). Whilst the precise address isn't shown, should you enter Islington instead of London you'll get the same result - which confirms that they were registered in Islington. Alongside the search result you'll see "Electoral Roll 2002-07" which tells you that by the time the 2008 roll was being compiled the Blair family had either moved, or had ticked the 'no publicity' box on the form. It seems to have been the latter, because if you search the whole country for an Anthony Blair in the same household as Cherie Booth you won't get any results after 2007.

Tip: before you start using the 192.com site yourself I should warn you that they don't offer an unlimited number of free searches - though you can double the number available simply by using a different browser. A good time, perhaps, to download the free Firefox browser if you don't already have it!

When you search at 192.com any results from the telephone directory are also displayed - and those really are free, so you'll get the full address and postcode. Of course, sometimes the phone won't be in the name of the person you're looking for - but because the names of other people in the household are displayed you can try searching for them instead. Once you have a postcode, whether from the phone directory or some other source, you can use that in your search of the Electoral Roll.

Being able to see the names of other people in the household is very useful - if they all have different surnames then you can be pretty certain that it's either a shared house or some form of establishment, possibly a care home. You can look up the addresses and phone numbers of care homes in the area using the Care Quality Commission website, though you need to remember that the Data Protection Act may prevent them confirming whether nor not the person you're seeking is one of their residents.

Tip: if the search result covers more than one year the other inhabitants listed won't necessarily have been present in every year (even if you specified two names using the Advanced search); if you need to make sure, repeat the search using each of the other names individually.

It can be difficult trying to identify the right person when the surname is a common one, or when you have only the vaguest idea of where they would be living - but one possible aid is the estimated age that's shown against each Search result (in my experience these are usually a good guide).

Tip: if you ever come across a copy of UK Info Disk 2002 (also known as version 7) buy it! It's the last edition to have the complete Electoral Roll, ie before people could opt out. However, it won't work on a computer with a modern version of Windows - you will need Windows Me or earlier.

Getting the most from FreeBMD

In my last newsletter I recommended that the Trustees of the FreeBMD charity divert resources from the FreeBMD project - where realistically no more work needs to be done - to their FreeREG project. As I explained in my article, that doesn't detract in any way from the sterling work that has been done in the past - it simply reflects the fact that whilst it's already possible to look up the GRO indexes online free of charge for the entire 1837-1983 period (which was FreeBMD's aim), there are thousands of parish registers that have never been transcribed, and so contain information that could knock down hundreds of thousands of 'brick walls'. Just as other charities move their resources from one country or one project to another according to need, so too should FreeBMD.

But there's one thing that the Trustees of the charity have little control over - and that's how you and I use their website. Indeed, I suspect that some people reading this article may never have felt the need to use the FreeBMD site, assuming that the services that Ancestry and (more recently) findmypast have made it redundant! So in this article I'm going to explain why Ancestry subscribers in particular should use the FreeBMD site, and why all of us could benefit from the 'postems' that other users have left.

If you're an Ancestry subscriber you'll be aware that their indexes for the 1837-1915 period have been sourced from FreeBMD, but what you may not know is that searching the indexes at Ancestry can be problematic because of the changes in the way that middle names were recorded. In some years middle names were recorded in full, in other years they were recorded as initials - thus in 1842 the indexes show the birth of Henry William Ingoldsby Smythe, in 1888 you'll find Thomas William C Smythe, but in 1913 the indexes record the birth of John W Smythe.

How could this affect you? Suppose you search at Ancestry for the birth of John W Smythe - in this case you'll find the entry from 1913 mentioned above. But were you to search for John William Smythe you would only find births in 1860, 1900, and 1901. "No problem", you might say, "I'll search for John W* Smythe, since the * wildcard can replace any number of letters" - but that won't work because at Ancestry names must contain at least three non wildcard characters. "All right", you might respond, "in that case I'll untick the Exact matches only box" - but whilst that solution does work, after a fashion, the first John William Smythe in the search results is 12th in the list, the second is 25th in the list, and the third is 28th (so unless you have 50 results per page, the last two won't even be on the first page of results).

Using FreeBMD you can specify a middle initial yet still find entries where the middle name was spelled out in full - it's a much better system, and one that can not only save you time and stress, but also help you to avoid mistakes. In this case I deliberately chose a rare surname - but just suppose that the surname had not been Smythe, but Smith!

The problems I've described above are unique to Ancestry - findmypast offers a much more powerful search facility. But one useful feature that you'll only find at FreeBMD whichever site you subscribe to is the option to add a postem to a record - a sort of post-it-note in which you can record information that might help other users of the site. For example, if you have the certificate you might summarise the contents; similarly, if you have reason to believe that the GRO index entry is incorrect (ie the original index, not the transcription thereof) you can mention this.

Unfortunately less than one record in 1000 at FreeBMD currently has a postem, so it's quite possible that you'll never come across one in your research (look out for an envelope symbol, rather like the ones that you'll see on your My Cousins page at the LostCousins site). But that certainly shouldn't stop you creating postems for the benefit of others, particularly since it will often be your own cousins that you're helping.

Family history is good for you!

Just before Christmas listeners to the BBC Radio 4 programme All In The Mind heard from Peter Fischer, Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Graz in Austria whose research suggests that thinking and focussing in your ancestors can increase your performance in intelligence tests (you can hear the programme online by clicking here).

Previous research has shown that keeping the mind active helps to delay the onset of dementia - it seems that genealogy is one of the few things that we can enjoy and improve our health and well-being at the same time!

International Reply Coupons to expire

When you're writing to somebody you don't know, but hope may be able to assist you with your researches, I'm sure that you enclose a stamped-addressed envelope - not only as a matter of courtesy, but also so that they have every reason to respond. But what if you were writing to somebody overseas - how can you recompense them for the cost of their reply?

International Reply Coupons were designed to fill this need, and whilst they are an expensive solution - they cost £1.40 to buy in the UK, but can only be exchanged for 67p worth of stamps - there usually isn't a better option.

If you have any International Reply Coupons that you haven't cashed you need to be aware that according to the Royal Mail website the current version has an expiry date of 31st December 2011. My advice would be to leave it until later in the year to cash them, since no doubt there will be an increase in overseas postal rates (which will increase their value), but there's also no reason why you can't send a coupon you've received to somebody else in another country. Sadly all the coupons I have seem to be from earlier issues that have already expired - but I'll nevertheless see whether my local post office will accept them. Whatever you do, don't make the same mistake as me!

Note: I'd love to show you a picture of the coupons that will expire this year, but I can't find one anywhere - not even on the Royal Mail website!

How to send money overseas

The simplest and cheapest way to send money to someone in a different country is to use PayPal. I didn't realise until recently that you can use PayPal to send or receive money even if the other person doesn't have already have a PayPal account - all you need to know is their email address. PayPal has been in business since 1999, have been owned by eBay since 2002 - and handle millions of payments every day. It's a great system that beats anything that the banks and post offices can offer!

Facebook security scare

Facebook recently introduced a new feature whereby the personal information of Facebook users, including their home addresses and mobile phone numbers could be disclosed to developers of Facebook apps without the account holder necessarily being aware or explicitly giving permission. (This is not dissimilar to the 'wish list' security flaw that I identified at Amazon last year, and which was rectified within weeks of my article appearing.)

In the case the feature was temporarily disabled by Facebook after Graham Cluley, of the British information security company Sophos, wrote about it in his blog - but after reading some of his other articles I was mightily relieved that I'm not a Facebook user. I suspect that very few Facebook users are aware just how dangerous an environment it has become, with 'rogue apps' that seem just like the real thing. And when a site has 800 million users, it only takes a very small fraction to fall victim to a scam for the perpetrators to make a fortune.

Tip: only you and I can see the information you enter at LostCousins - even your cousins can't see it.

Is findmypast's loss your gain?

Brightsolid, the Scottish company that owns findmypast and Genes Reunited has recently reported a loss for its last financial year. This isn't particularly surprising, given the enormous investment they have already made in new records, such as the 1911 Census, and will be continuing to make - additions in the current year will include the biggest collection there is of Welsh parish registers, the first tranche of British Library newspapers, and many other datasets including merchant seamen and militia records held by the National Archives.

If you already have a full subscription to findmypast then you'll benefit from these new records, but if you're not yet a subscriber (or have a lower level subscription) you can benefit from a recent price-cut in the Full subscription, which is now available for just £129.95 per annum (or £82.95 for 6 months). I don't know long findmypast can keep the price this low (after all, existing subscribers get a 20% loyalty discount when they renew - see here for full details), but clearly they need to bring in new subscribers to help pay the enormous investment they are making in new records.

Tip: until the end of January you can get a free LostCousins subscription worth up to £12.50 if you click here immediately before subscribing to findmypast. Your LostCousins subscription will be paid for by the commission we receive from findmypast and will last for the same period as your findmypast subscription. To claim your free subscription just send me a copy of your email receipt from findmypast. Warning: if for any reason you are logged out from the findmypast site before you have completed your purchase you'll need to click the link above again before you log back in.

Me and Robbie Burns

I've already been to two Burns Night suppers this year, even though the anniversary of his birth in 1759 won't be until Tuesday 25th January. As I ate haggis, neeps, and tatties, and sipped whisky I was reminded that even though I don't - to the best of my knowledge - have any Scottish blood in my veins, I do have an ancestor named Burns.

My great-great grandmother Mary Ann Burns is one of my most frustrating brick walls - for 8 years I've been trying to track down her origins, but even though she was born in London around 1839 according to the censuses (though 4 different birthplaces are given, which doesn't help) I can't identify her baptism in the London Metropolitan Archives parish register collection at Ancestry, nor have I been able to find her birth certificate.

Sadly the chances of discovering that I am related to the immortal Robbie Burns aren't very great - he was born Robert Burness, and didn't adopt the spelling Burns until 1786. On the other hand, he did have a son called James (which was the name my great-great grandmother gave for her father on her wedding day), and he did have a son who came to London - though they weren't one and the same.

How reliable are certificates?

Do you believe everything you read on a birth, marriage, or death certificate? I certainly don't, because experience has shown that many of them contain errors. In some cases the errors arise because the information has been copied incorrectly - remember that the register entries sent to the GRO have usually been copied by the registrar or vicar (in the case of church marriages), and aren't the same pieces of paper that your relatives signed. But even if you get a certificate from the local register office, it might still be wrong.

For example, I obtained a copy of the marriage entry for my ancestor Mary Ann Burns from the local register office - which showed that her father's name was James Brown. For years I pondered this, until eventually I decided to check what the church copy of the register said - and discovered that in this register her father's name was shown as James Burns. Both certificates had been signed by my great-great grandparents, who you might expect to have noticed the discrepancy, but perhaps some of the information was filled in later? Or were they so overwhelmed by the occasion that they signed without reading the entry carefully?

Personally I suspect that they were more focused on the fact that they were both claiming to be 'of full age' even though neither had reached 21. I wonder whether they married behind their parents' backs? Neither of the witnesses were family members, and my great grandmother was born just four and a half months after the wedding, so it's not surprising they didn't want to wait until they reached the age of consent.

Marriage certificates are the ones that are most often incorrect - usually because the age of one or more of the participants has 'adjusted' to suit. Indeed, I would estimate that over half of all marriage certificates I've seen are wrong in some respect - if not the ages, then the father's name or occupation. It would take someone with great courage and fortitude to own up to being illegitimate on their wedding day, so it's hardly surprising that many brides and grooms gave misleading information. Strangely we often ignore the most reliable information on marriage certificates - the names of the witnesses!

Death certificates are the second most likely to contain errors, even though the information on them is minimal (in the case of English & Welsh certificates). No doubt in some cases the mistakes were made as a result of grief, but more often they must be the result of ignorance - particularly when the person who died is the last of their generation.

Tip: obituaries are even less reliable than death certificates - everyone wants to say nice things about the departed, so even an though obituary appears in black and white you can be pretty certain that it is rose-tinted!

Of course, certificates are often the most reliable source available to us - so to an extent we do have to rely on the information they contain. However, we must nevertheless keep an open mind about their accuracy, just as we would with information from any other source - and as we research further we invariably discover other clues to their veracity.

Is it legal to photocopy certificates?

Every birth, marriage, or death certificate bears the legend 'Crown Copyright', so you might expect it to be illegal to make copies. However, you'd be wrong - as this page on the National Archives website makes clear. Many thanks to member John for pointing this out - last I heard he was considering using the hundreds of certificates that he owns as the basis for a book (there are numerous print-on-demand publishers).

We're number 2 so we try harder!

Do you remember the ads for Avis? I certainly do, and running LostCousins - which is way behind the Genes Reunited in terms of membership numbers - I'm very conscious of how much harder I have to work to deliver that little bit extra for my members. One of the extras I offer is the way that I will personally do my best to put you in contact with a relative you've found through LostCousins, even when they aren't replying for some reason. At other sites you'll usually have no way of knowing if the other person has changed their email address, has passed away, lost interest in family history, or simply doesn't want to talk to you.

Recently Jayne asked if I could put her back in touch with a cousin she'd found through my site in 2007, but subsequently lost contact with. When I investigated I discovered that his email address no longer worked, and (like you, perhaps?) he hadn't provided a secondary email address. However, he had provided his postal address, so I wrote him a letter - hoping that even if he had moved, it would find its way to him. You can imagine how delighted I was when a week later I received an email from Jayne, thanking me for putting them back in touch.

Then, a couple of days ago, I noticed that an email had bounced back from the address of a member in Canada. Since it was a message from a new cousin I immediately started to look for ways to track down a more up to date email address. As usual I started with Google, but that didn't help - so next I tried the Canadian phone directory, where I struck lucky! Two minutes later I was on the phone to Norman, who told me that he had emigrated 51 years ago - and shortly afterwards he was in contact with a distant relative in England (who, as far as I know, is still completely unaware of what I got up to behind the scenes).

Fortunately problems of this nature occur sufficiently infrequently that I can investigate each one individually, then take appropriate action. I can't always re-establish contact with the member who has gone AWOL (some members don't give any alternative contact information), but most of the time I'm successful.

Peter's Tips

I can still remember a time when if you wanted to make an international call you had to book it in advance - and the call itself was so expensive that it was sort of thing you'd only do in an emergency. But nowadays international phone calls needn't be expensive - when I called Norman in Canada it cost me just 0.5p per minute! I use 18185.co.uk, but there are other companies who are in the same price bracket, and so long as you have a BT line you can take advantage of the low prices without switching operator. It's so much easier than using an Internet-based service like Skype.

Advice sought: I'm currently looking into the possibility of having some solar panels (PV) fitted because it seems to be a way of saving money whilst simultaneously helping the environment - so I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has already taken the plunge. One thing I do know, having read a recent Which? magazine report, is that for most people the 'free panel' deals on offer are not as good an option as they appear.

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 Calver

Founder, LostCousins