Newsletter - 19 June 2011
Childhood memories
Wills and probate records
New death index search pays dividends
Medals for 90 year-old woman
Family history on the Kindle
Competition entries flooding in
Unusual census entries
Wrong name on the
census?
Dorset records - update
Identifying relatives in photos
(continued)
Dutch records free online
Findmypast gets TV series
Is there a Doctor in the house?
Fancy a Twitter?
Peter's Tips
Have you tried...
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 6 June 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).
Childhood memories
My earliest surviving memory is of the
day I broke my leg - it was the summer of 1954 and I was 3 years old (though no
doubt if you'd asked me at the time I would have claimed to be "nearly
4"). The next incident I can remember was a few months later - it was the
day my grandfather was taken into hospital, never to return.
I don't remember my first day at school,
even though it must have been traumatic, but I do recall hearing about the Suez
Crisis (even if, at the tender age of 6, I didn't understand what it was all
about).
Isn't
it strange what we do and don't remember? A recent article in New Scientist suggested that most of us
don't remember very much at all from our early years- and usually nothing at
all before the age of 2 or 3. There's some suggestion that the ability to form
memories is associated with our linguistic ability at the time (although I've
always thought that it was because at such a young age there's often very
little to distinguish one day from the next).
Researchers have found that we are
particularly susceptible to creating false memories of our childhood, which
makes it difficult to rely on our recollections unless they are supported by
more tangible evidence such as photographs (and even then, there must be the
possibility that we reverse-engineered the memory from the photograph).
What do you remember from your
childhood? Have your childhood memories helped you to piece together the
fragments of information you've collected during your family history research?
Wills and probate records
One of the great things about wills is
discovering unexpected clues - perhaps a legacy left to a godson, a derogatory
comment about a relative, or the discovery of a hitherto unknown child. A few
months ago I found all three of these - and more - in two wills from the early
1800s at the London Metropolitan Archives, and they enabled me to solve a
mystery that has puzzled other researchers for decades.
Prior to 1858 there were over 250 ecclesiatical courts across England & Wales that could
handle probate matters, some more important than others. One of the most
important was the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC), which handled the
wills of relatively wealthy people in the south of England & Wales (though
not necessarily that wealthy, because I found the will of one of my ancestors
there!). PCC wills can be found at Documents
Online, and whilst you have to pay for a copy of the will, searching is
free.
There is an excellent guide to wills and
probate at the National
Archives website, however one of the key links no longer works: if you want
to order a post-1858 will click here
instead (thanks to Graham for letting me know about the change).
From 1858 onwards the Principal Probate
Registry kept a copy of every will proved, and ever letter of administration
issued. At Ancestry
you can search the National
Probate Calendar from 1861-1941, which is an almost complete index with
brief details about the deceased and the executors or adminstrators.
Tip:
I read in the latest issue of Your Family Tree that between 30th June
and 8th July researchers will be able to search the National Probate Calendar
free at Ancestry. Click here
to go to the relevant page on the Ancestry site (there may not be any details
of the offer shown until it actually commences).
If you decide to order a copy of a
post-1858 will after searching at Ancestry click here
- when I checked just now the link to the Probate Registry on the Ancestry site
was out of date.
New death index search pays dividends
I mentioned recently that findmypast now
allow one search that covers all of their official birth, marriage, and death
indexes. Not long afterwards Jenny wrote to tell me of here success in tracing
her uncle's death after many years of searching:
"Thanks to a prompt from you I
logged on to Deaths in Find My Past and typed in my long lost uncle's name as I
have done so many times in the past 18 years I have been searching for him. The
search produced three names and one was him. I am so thrilled and have sent for
his certificate and found he was an assistant steward on a ship named Thesus."
At findmypast
you can learn a lot from their free search results, even if you don't have a subscription
- click here to see whether you can make
any discoveries of your own.
Tip:
we get so used to searching the main GRO BMD indexes that it's easy to forget
that there are also official indexes of British subjects who were born. married, or died overseas.
Medals for 90 year-old woman
Yvonne Cornelius, a 90 year-old woman
from Porthcawl in Wales who served as a Corporal in
the Women's Auxiliary Air Force during World War 2, has just received the
medals she was awarded for her loyal service - 70 years after playing a key
role in the Battle of Britain.
For full details and a photograph see
the BBC
News website.
Family history on the Kindle
Sadly there aren't many family history
books that are currently available in Kindle
format - which is a shame, because my bookshelves are already full to
overflowing.
I was therefore delighted to hear that LostCousins
member Linda Ellis has embraced modern technology by making the history of her
family available in Kindle format - it's available from the Kindle store for
just 69p. I bought a copy to show my support for what Linda has done, and if
you're a Kindle owner you might want to do the same. Click here
to go straight to the page at Amazon (you don't need a Kindle just to take a
look!).
Talking of the Kindle, Eric wrote to
tell me of an outstanding example of customer service:
" Last Thurday afternoon I
telephoned Amazon to report a problem with my Kindle, which is 5 months old.
"I was told that a replacement
would be sent, and I was given details of a website to print a returns label so
that I could send the faulty machine back.
"Hey presto! At 10 am on Friday the postman arrived with my new
Kindle, and I was relieved to find that I could transfer my books from old to
new. I now just have to wait for their carrier to collect the old one.
"How's that for customer
service?"
I buy all sorts of things from Amazon -
not just books. One of my recent purchases was a stainless steel cafetiere; another was a spare battery for my Nokia mobile phone (just £2.99 including postage). Because
they allow other people to sell things through their site the chances of
finding a bargain are a lot greater.
Tip:
you can support LostCousins by clicking here
to visit the Amazon site. Then, if you buy something during the same visit we'll
get a small commission. It may be as little as 1p, but believe me, if everyone
did that I'd soon be able to finance some of the improvements to the
LostCousins site that have been on my 'wish list' for a couple of years.
Competition entries flooding in
It's often said that it's hard to get
enthusiastic about someone else's family tree, but if you'd had the opportunity
to read the stories copied to me by LostCousins members who are entering the
Federation of Family History Societies competition (mentioned in my last
newsletter), you would have been fascinated - as I was.
Do keep those entries coming!
Tip:
there's a link to the last newsletter at the beginning of this one; indeed,
each of my newsletters has a link to the one before, so you can still read any of
the articles I've written since the newsletters went online in February 2009.
Unusual census entries
Bill wrote from Australia to tell me
about a family he'd found in the 1881 Census. Apart from ascribing some unusual
occupations to members of his family, it looks to me as if the head of
household invented the birthplaces of his many servants. The quickest way to look
up the household is a census reference search
at findmypast - enter the piece number as 20, the folio as 126, and the page
number as 48.
You don't need to be a subscriber to
access the 1881 census transcription at findmypast or Ancestry, though Ancestry
doesn't show the information in such a convenient format, so I prefer to use
findmypast.
Tip:
you can use the census reference search facility to quickly check that the
information on your My Ancestors page is correct - first
choose the 'Household' sort and then put in the references for each household.
Wrong name on the
census?
Pamela wrote from Australia with an
interesting question, and I thought it would be useful to reproduce Pamela's
question and my answer in the newsletter, since I'm sure that many other
members have come across similar situations.
"On the 1881 census I have 2
children listed under their stepfather's surname. In the 1891 census they have reverted to
their father's surname. I had found them
previously with their widowed mother and her mother-in-law in the 1871 census.
She married again and used her previous married name not her maiden name -
created a little detective work there.
"Question is,
what name should I list them on Lost Cousins to make it easier for other people
to connect?"
This was my reply:
"Pamela, there are two sections on
the Add Ancestor form. The first part is for information from the census - and
you should never enter anything here that wasn't shown on the relevant census.
"In the second, optional, part of
the form you can enter corrections and additional information. Some of the
information you enter here (currently maiden names and corrected surnames) is
recycled into indexes that help other members find their relatives.
"Obviously the members most likely
to be helped by that information are the ones who are your cousins - so I'd
recommend that when you're entering the stepchildren you show their father's
surname in the 'Corrected surname' box, and when you're entering their mother
you show the surname she was born with in the 'Maiden name' box."
In your case the circumstances may be
different, but the same principle applies - it's the information shown on the
census that will lead to your 'lost cousins', whether it's right or wrong.
A related question that members often
ask is whether they should enter what the enumerator wrote, or what the transcriber
thought he wrote - and the answer to this depends on which census you're
talking about. For the 1880/81 censuses, the ones that were originally
transcribed by FamilySearch, you should use the transcription, but for the other
censuses you should enter what the enumerator (1841) or householder (1911)
wrote.
Don't worry if this sounds confusing,
because the input form tells you what to do - the advice on the form varies
according to the census you select from the dropdown menu.
Dorset records - update
In my last newsletter I welcomed the
news that Ancestry had made available online the parish registers and
other records held at Dorset Records Office - but added the caution "I
just hope they haven't made too many blunders".
So far it's a fairly mixed bag. Caroline
wrote to tell me that some of the probate records have
been indexed under the name of the person to whom the letters of administration
had been granted, rather than the name of the person who had died - which seems
a strange way of doing things. Jennifer was delighted with the number of
baptism entries she'd found, but remarked that "you are right to query the
accuracy of the transcriptions - I found several errors in only 5 entries".
Nevertheless, everyone I've spoken to
agrees that the more parish registers that can be made
available online, the better - especially if the entries are indexed. Let's
hope that many more record offices in England will be prepared to join the few
who have so far made their registers available online (Welsh parish records are
in the process of being digitised by findmypast).
Tip:
you can get free access to transcriptions of some of the Dorset parish
registers at the Dorset
Parish Registers Index website.
Identifying relatives in photos
(continued)
Since my last newsletter I've been
contacted by more members who have been able to identify relatives in
photographs thanks to the help of distant cousins. Rodney told me how when his
mother passed away he found a dozen photographs from around the turn of the
20th century which contained relatives he was unable to identify. Now, after
getting help from his 5th and 6th cousins, Rodney knows who almost all of them
are!
Dutch records free online
It has been some years since I've
mentioned Genlias in my
newsletter, and it won't be of interest to every member - but for anyone who
has ancestors who came from Holland, or relatives who migrated there, it’s a goldmine.
Civil registration began in 1811 (or a few years earlier in some parts of the
country) and all that information has been preserved, although to protect
personal privacy birth records aren’t published until they are 100 years old,
marriages until they are 75 years old, and deaths until 50 years afterwards.
The information is released in 10 year blocks, and currently the records go up
to 1902, 1932, and 1952 respectively.
There is also a programme to add earlier
data taken from parish registers. Lynne - who reminded me about the Genlias
site in an email recently - wrote "I can't believe how detailed their
records are, most BMD records have date of birth, place of birth, parents names
so it has been a breeze to go back to the 1700's without shelling out for certificates.
If only our records were like this.....".
I hope that one day we will indeed have
records that are as accessible as this for England & Wales (Scotland is
already there, thanks to Scotlandspeople). The closest we have at the moment are
the local BMD projects, which you can find through the UKBMD site.
Findmypast gets TV series
According to an article on the Guardian
website, findmypast is sponsoring a new 10 part series called "Find My
Past" that will be shown on the Yesterday Freeview
channel during the winter of 2011/12.
Is there a Doctor in the house?
I'd be interested in making contact with
any members who are general practitioners here in Britain. Nothing to do with family
history, I'm afraid - it's a project I'm helping with that's related to
patients who have psychological issues. All emails sent to LostCousins come to
me so you can use the usual address to get in touch (I don't include the email
address in the newsletter itself because of the spam
it would inevitably attract, but of course it's in the email your received
telling you about the newsletter).
Fancy a Twitter?
One or two members have suggested that
as my newsletters are only issued twice a month on average, I should consider
using Twitter to send out urgent messages. These might include (for example)
last minute closures of records offices, short-term offers, imminent
price increases - in short, anything that really can't wait until the next
edition.
Currently I'm somewhat agnostic towards
Twitter - I can see that it could be very useful if used wisely, but most of
the 'tweets' I've seen have been so inane that they make txt msgs look like the works of Shakespeare.
Any thoughts from the
Twitter users (or prospective users) out there?
Peter's Tips
I recently discovered a great free utility
for converting web pages to PDF files - and you don't even have to install It on your computer, it all works online. Simply click here, enter the
web address (or URL) for the page you want to convert, decide on the paper
size, and off you go!
The same site has lots of other useful
utilities that I've yet to try out - do let me know if you discover another one
that LostCousins members might find particularly useful.
Note:
I found this tip in a most unexpected source - The Oldie magazine (it's one of only a
handful of non-genealogy magazines that I read regularly). I'm hoping that one
of these days I'll persuade Richard Ingrams, the
editor, to let me write a regular family history column for the magazine...
Another great tip from the same magazine
is a map of the London Underground
system showing where all the trains are (click on one of the yellow markers to
find out where the train is going, and when it's expected at the next station).
Just goes to show that we 'oldies' like to stay up to date with the latest
gizmos (but what a shame that we can't currently get that information while
we're actually underground).
Along similar lines, but above ground,
is the RadarVirtuel site that shows
you the position of all the aeroplanes over the UK, Europe, and most of the
rest of the world. Click on any of the planes to find out the airline, model of
plane, flight number, air speed and much more. This tip came from Tony, a pilot
who lives in the same village as me.
Note:
you may have problems with the RadarVirtuel site if you use Internet Explorer,
but it works fine with Firefox (my browser of choice).
Thinking of changing your computer? Make
sure you make a copy of all the data first! I get innumerable emails from
members who have lost files or email addresses when they have changed computer.
Although it has never happened to me, even
if it did, it wouldn't matter because I always keep my old computers until I'm
absolutely sure I don't need them any more. Sometimes I transfer the hard disk
from my old computer to the new one, not as the main hard drive, but as a
secondary drive. Even if the old computer won't boot from the drive, it's often
possible to recover the data when you plug it into the new computer.
How often do you back up your data?
Probably, like me, you don't do it often enough - but do you realise that there
are some people who never make backup
copies? Although I feel sorry for someone who writes to tell me that they've
lost 10 years of research due to a hard drive failure, I can't help also
wondering why on earth they didn't make a backup.
Have you tried...
A lot of people use webmail
services like Hotmail, Yahoo, or Gmail (the best in
my opinion), but I like to store all of my correspondence on my own computer.
For the best part of 20 years I've been
using the same email program - a free program called Pegasus Mail - and for me it is ideal. Even
after all this time I'm still getting to grips with some of the more advanced
features, but if it can send out 55,000 plus emails to members whenever there's
a new edition of my newsletter, it can probably cope with your needs.
There's a forum where users help each
other, and - although the program is free - you can, as I have done, send a
donation to the author to show your appreciation (and ensure that he continues
to support the program).
This where any last
minute amendments will be recorded or highlighted.
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