Newsletter - 21 May 2011
Problem solved!
The most comprehensive death indexes
Masterclass: Extending your tree beyond 1911
Researching children in family history
Nick is the new president!
How accurate was the 2011 Census?
Canadian census disclosure option
The mystery of the missing will
My first experience of spam
Low key launch for new Irish site
Tracing 'Ag Labs'
Hearth Tax returns online
Posting family trees on the Internet
The personal touch
Peter's Tips
Have you tried…
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 29 April 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.
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).
Problem solved!
In my last newsletter I invited members
to suggest new names for My Ancestors
and My Cousins, the two most
important pages at the LostCousins site. There was an excellent response with
some very interesting suggestions - but the vast majority of members who
responded like the existing names, and would rather that they didn't change,
and I have to respect that. Nevertheless I feel that there's no longer such a
risk that new members, or those who are unfamiliar with the site, might be
confused about the purpose of the pages.
One part of the solution was already in
place! Several members reminded me that anyone who isn't sure what each page
does gets a preview as they move the mouse pointer over the menu items - for
example, as you move the pointer over the words My Ancestors the tip "Your deceased relatives who were
recorded on the censuses" appears; similarly, as you move it over My Cousins the words "Your living
relatives" are displayed.
However, I've also added a new option to
the menu, Search. Members who are
logged in will be taken to their My
Ancestors page, where with one click of the Search button they can compare every entry they've made against the
all entries made by other members (although this can involve over one billion
comparisons it takes just seconds). Non-members who click Search will be taken to a page that describes how LostCousins works
- and where they can learn what makes the site so different. Regular users of
the LostCousins site won't be directly affected by these changes, but I suspect
they'll prove a great help for new or infrequent users - and this should lead
to better results for the rest of us!
The most comprehensive death indexes
Findmypast have at last released their
fully transcribed GRO death indexes 1837-2006,
complementing the indexes of British overseas
deaths 1818-2005, British deaths at sea
1854-1890, and British armed forces
deaths 1796-2005 announced in my last newsletter.
It's now possible to search all of these
death indexes with a single search - indeed,
I'd recommend that you consider making this your default method of searching,
because it's easy to forget the overseas indexes (and time-consuming to search
them separately).
Masterclass: Extending your tree beyond 1911
If your family comes from England or
Wales, and you have a findmypast Foundation or Full subscription you'll not
only have access to the fully transcribed birth, marriage, and death indexes but
also to the complete England & Wales 1911 Census. By combining these two
resources you'll probably find that you can add dozens of new relatives to your
family tree - without spending a penny on certificates!
Here's how I generally go about it:
(1) Where there are married couples on
the 1911 Census and the wife is of child-bearing age (typically up to 47) I
search the birth indexes for children
born to the couple using the family surname and mother's maiden name. The rarer
the surnames the more confident I can be about identifying the entries,
especially if I also take into account the choice of forenames, the timing of
the births, and the districts where the births were registered.
(2) I then check to see whether I can
identify marriages involving relatives
who were single in 1911. This is generally only possible when the surnames are
fairly uncommon (but see below).
(3) Having identified these post-1911
marriages, or possible marriages, I look in the birth indexes for children born to the couple
using the technique described in (1) above. Sometimes the choice of forenames
will help to confirm whether or not I've found the right marriage.
(4) I next look for the deaths of the couples whose children I've
been seeking. If the precise date of birth is included in the death indexes, as
it is for later entries, this often helps to confirm not only that I've found
the right death entry, but also - in the case of a female relative - that I've
found the right marriage. Even if I don't know exactly when my relative was
born, the quarter in which the birth was registered defines a 19 week window
(remember that births can be registered up to 6 weeks after the event). Why
does this work best for female relatives? Because they will have changed their
surname on marriage, so their birth will be registered in one name and the
death in another - and there will be a marriage that links the two.
(5) Now I start on the next generation,
the children who were recorded in 1911 or whose births I have been able to
identify as belonging to my tree. I look for both marriages and deaths, because if I find the death of a female
relative recorded under her maiden name, this usually indicates that she didn't
marry.
(6) Having identified marriages I then
look in the birth indexes for children
born to those marriages - and continue this process until either I reach the
present day, or I get to a point where I can't tell with reasonable certainty
which entries relate to my relatives. Mind you, when it comes to more recent
generations there are all sorts of additional sources of information -
including social networking sites such as Friends Reunited and Facebook, and
searches of the electoral roll (see my January newsletter
if you want to know how to get free information from the electoral roll).
Here are some key dates to bear in mind
when searching:
2nd April 1911 - Census Day
1st July 1911 - from this date the
mother's maiden name was included in the birth indexes
1st January 1912 - the surname of the
spouse was included in the marriage indexes
1st January 1966 - from this date the
first two forenames are shown in full in the birth indexes
1st April 1969 - the precise date of
birth was included in the death indexes and the first two forenames were shown
in full
During the 20th century middle names are
more consistent than they were in the 19th century - there is less of a
tendency for them to appear or disappear between birth, marriage, and death.
Unfortunately for more than half a century after 1910 only the first forename
was shown in full in the birth and death indexes, and the marriage indexes only
show one forename for the whole period after 1910 - so a perfect match on the
second forename is only possible if the relative was born before 1911 and died
after March 1969.
What can you hope to achieve by
following the techniques I've described? In my case I've been able to extend
some lines forward by as many as four generations, although three is more typical.
In all I've added over two hundred 20th century relatives to my family tree,
most of whom are still living.
Of course, if you decide to contact a
living relative you've identified in this way you're unlikely to find that they
share your interest in family history - though there's a fair chance that
they'll be able to tell you of someone else in their part of your tree who is doing
research. (By contrast, when you find a living relative through LostCousins you
know they're interested in family history - otherwise they wouldn't have joined,
and wouldn't have had the necessary census information.)
Note:
although you could use the BMD indexes at Ancestry, rather than findmypast,
it's much more difficult and time-consuming to use Ancestry because of the way
their searches work (this applies whether you choose the 'old' search or the
'new' search). Whilst findmypast allows you to search the entire period with a
single search, at Ancestry pre-1915 records must be searched separately - but
even more annoying is the way that Ancestry forces you to search separately for
middle forenames and middle initials. The net result is that something that
would take ONE search at findmypast can sometimes require FOUR different
searches at Ancestry.
Researching children in family history
On Saturday 11th June there is a
half-day course at the Society of Genealogists which focuses on children. The
afternoon begins with a thought-provoking talk by Michael Gandy which will
focus on the problem that children born to a family might never appear with
them on a census; it continues with a lecture by Liz Carter entitled 'The
Victorian Child', which will look at changing attitudes towards childhood and
childcare in Victorian England. The course is open to all, but SoG members get a 20% discount which brings the cost down to
just £14 - see the SoG
website for more information about this and other courses.
Tip:
non-members who attend a course at the SoG can access
the library at a reduced rate
Nick is the new president!
Nick Barratt,
the well-known genealogist (and a long-term supporter of LostCousins) has been
elected President of the Federation of Family History Societies. Congratulations, Nick!
How accurate was the 2011 Census?
When I was filling in my census form
online I didn't get the feeling that the information would be of much use to
future researchers, although I did my best by entering both my forenames in the
'first name' box. However, there was nowhere to record the town or even the
county where I was born - so in this respect we've gone right back to 1841.
But leaving aside the questions that
weren't asked, it wasn't always possible to answer every question fully online
- for example, there's not a lot of room to enter the name of one's employer,
or to describe one's job - and, as a Your
Family Tree reader pointed out in the May issue, it isn't possible to give
a year earlier than 1951 as the date when someone last worked (his 89 year-old
mother hadn't worked since the end of World War 2).
These days many people have two or more
jobs, but the only questions asked are about an individual's main job - is that
the job that pays the most bills, or the one that the person identifies with
most closely? As I filled in my online census questionnaire I felt distinctly
uncomfortable as I reflected on how the answers might be misinterpreted in the
future.
Tip:
if you haven't already submitted your census form, Sunday 22nd May will be your
last chance to do so. The Help websites will also close that evening, so if you
want to keep a copy of the information for future reference, don't delay!
Canadian census disclosure option
Starting from 2006 Canadians completing census
forms have been invited to tick a box to confirm that they want their census
records to be transferred to Library & Archives Canada after 92 years. As I
understand it, if they don't tick the box then their information won't ever be
made public - so I hope that all our Canadian members have been ticking the
box! Online returns must be submitted before the end of May.
Note:
since 2001 Australians have been able to ask that their census data is
transferred to the National Archives of Australia after 99 years. However, this
was an improvement on the situation that existed previously - until 2001 all
the returns were destroyed once the statistical information had been collated.
The mystery of the missing will
Bob, one of our longest-serving members,
recently wrote to tell me how he had ordered a copy of his great-aunt's will,
which he had found listed in the probate registry's own index - only to be told
that it couldn't be found in their Birmingham warehouse. To make matters worse,
they didn't even offer to give him his money back!
Fortunately the story has a happy
ending. After Bob submitted an official complaint they had another look in
their warehouse and found the will - it seems that it had been correctly filed,
and that it was the date in the index that was wrong.
If you have an experience like Bob's,
whether with a will or some other vital document, don't give up - a bit of
persistence and you too might have a happy ending!
Low key launch for new Irish site
Findmypast
Ireland is a collaboration between findmypast and Eneclann, the award-winning Irish history and heritage
company. Irish research has always been difficult so a new data provider is
welcome, and whilst at this early stage there doesn't seem to be much on the
site that is new, I'm sure that will change over time.
Tip:
there is a comprehensive article about Irish research in the latest (June 2011)
issue of Your Family Tree - it's by Chris
Paton, who is not only a very knowledgeable writer,
but also a LostCousins member.
Tracing 'Ag Labs'
Many of my ancestors were agricultural
labourers - which is not surprising when you consider how many people worked on
the land in the 18th and early 19th centuries. The National Archives has
recently added a podcast that will help you trace
your 'ag lab' ancestors, and I can do no better than
quote from their website:
"It's
all too easy to fall into the trap of thinking that agricultural labourers are
boring and that you can't trace anything about them. In fact they can be very
interesting, and there's lots of information to be found if you know where to
look. This talk covers resources available in The National Archives, parish and
county records, and manor, estate and farm sources."
Click here
to go straight to the relevant page.
Hearth Tax returns online
British History Online has recently made
available transcriptions of Hearth Tax returns covering London, Westminster,
and Middlesex - and they are free!
If you're interested in returns for
other parts of the country don't forget Hearth Tax Online, which I wrote about
in my February
newsletter.
My first experience of spam
The first spam
email I can remember receiving arrived in my Compuserve
mailbox nearly 20 years ago. It told the sad tale of Craig Shergold,
a 9 year-old boy with a brain tumour who - according to the email - wanted to
get into the Guinness Book of Records by collecting more business cards than
anyone else. The email ended with a request to forward the email to everyone I
knew.
As with so many of these emails, there
was some truth behind the story. There was a young boy named Craig Shergold, and he had indeed set a world record for
collecting cards - but they were get-well cards, not business cards. Furthermore,
by the time the email arrived in my inbox he was several years older and well
on the way to recovery following a successful operation paid for by the
American billionaire John Kluge.
Over the next 10 years I must have
received dozens more copies of that email, all forwarded by people who knew me,
and more recently there have been other similar hoaxes. But Craig Shergold is the only name I remember - he was the first -
so when I spotted a second hand copy of his mother's book Craig
Shergold - A Mother's Story at Amazon
I couldn't resist buying it. I'm already on page 107 - it's easy to read, and
tells a very human story.
Tip:
if you ever receive an email that asks you to forward it to all your friends,
don't! Instead pick a key phrase from the email and see what Google can find - it's
almost certain to be a hoax.
Posting family trees on the Internet
There's always a big hoo-ha
in the press when a well-known website is hacked and personal information
stolen, yet many family historians willingly publish information on the
Internet without thinking carefully about how it might be misused. Recently
Diane wrote for my advice about uploading information to the net, and I'd like
to share my reply with you:
Diane, I've
written around this topic on many occasions in my newsletter -
and
my advice is not to upload information to the Internet.
If I didn't
believe in sharing information I wouldn't have spent the last 7
years
running LostCousins - but sharing information with a cousin isn't the
same
as publishing it on the Internet where literally anyone could see it.
The key factor
about LostCousins is that nobody else can see the
information
you enter - even after you've been linked with a cousin they
still
won't be able to see your My Ancestors page. All they'll know is
which
of their entries also appear on your page.
Once you have got
to know your new relative by all means exchange
information
with them - but my advice is that you don't give them your
entire
tree, only the part that's relevant. I suggest you also ask them not
to
pass it on to anytone else without checking with you
first (this
obviously
includes posting it online).
This way you'll
control who has your research, and will be able to contact
Them
with the inevitable updates and corrections.
Remember that once
your information gets into the wrong hands, you can
never
get it back!
Hope this helps
Peter
The personal touch
In 2009, when Ancestry was planning to
become a publicly-quoted company, I was surprised to note that none of the
company's directors said that they had any interest in researching their own family
history. With the benefit of hindsight, it's perhaps not surprising that in the
2 years since the IPO the Ancestry site has become more and more difficult to
use - which is a shame, because some of the records that have been added since
are an absolute goldmine of information (the London Metropolitan Archives
records, and the Liverpool parish registers spring to mind).
By contrast, if you go to the findmypast site you'll find photos of the key staff - together with
brief details of the research they've each done into their own family history. I'm
sure that like the rest of us they don't get always get everything right first
time, but knowing that they've researched their own family trees tells me that
it's something they care about (indeed, several of them are LostCousins members,
which shows how serious they are).
Note:
don't worry - I'm not going to post a photo of myself on the LostCousins site!
Peter's Tips
When I was young it was common to buy
things on hire-purchase, a form of borrowing where the goods belonged to the
finance company until the debt was paid. We used to call it "the
never-never" because it seemed to take forever to pay off the debt.
Nowadays credit cards and bank loans
have largely displaced hire purchase, but it can still take a very long time to
pay off debts. Recently my credit card company changed their minimum payments -
which didn't affect me, because I always pay the balance in full - but I
couldn't help noticing the graph that showed how long it would take to repay a
loan of £2500 if the minimum payment was made each month. Under the new system
it would take "only" about 11 years - under the old system it would
have taken nearly 30! I'd hate to think how much interest would be paid over
that time…
As a child I never liked it when my
mother bought own brands instead of tried-and-tested favourites such as Heinz
Tomato Ketchup, or Dairylea cheese spread - but times
have changed. Last year I decided to try Tesco's own
brand of tomato sauce, and I found it every bit as good as Heinz - so I was
interested to read an article in the latest Which? magazine
which gave the results of taste tests of 13 brands. The top three sauces were
all own brands (Sainsbury's, Tesco, Marks & Spencer) - whilst Heinz came
12th in the list, only kept out of bottom place by Daddies. Considering that
own brands are about half the price of the branded ketchups, I wonder why
anyone buys Heinz?
Prices in the supermarkets have gone up
so much in the past couple of years that there are some things I simply won't
buy any more unless they are on special offer, and even then it usually has to
be Buy-One-Get-One-Free to tempt me. I've been buying more and more of the
vegetables that my mother used to cook when I was young - such as spring greens
and cabbage - and forgoing the mange touts and sugarsnap
peas that I used to buy when prices were lower and incomes were higher. Cabbage
might sound boring, but when it's stir-fried rather than boiled it is absolutely
delicious.
Fruit is more expensive too, but I refuse
to switch to cheap juice for breakfast. Then I remembered something else from
my childhood - the half-time oranges when I played football. Now, instead of
squeezing oranges to make juice, a time-consuming and messy process that seems
to waste half of the fruit, I slice them into quarters or eighths. It's not
only quicker and cheaper - it's also healthier!
My favourite meal as a child was liver
and bacon, and it's something that I still eat as often as I can - and why not,
when for about a pound I can buy enough liver for two generous or four normal helpings?
Mind you, it wouldn't be the same without Marmite in the gravy - another tip I
picked up from Mum. Do you have a favourite meal that's not only quick and easy
to prepare, but also cheap to buy and healthy to eat? If I like the sound of
your suggestion I'll try it out myself and I'll also include my favourites in a
future newsletter!
I must confess that though I have
managed to save on the cost of essentials I still can't resist the occasional
luxury. This year it was a Nintendo
3DS handheld, which is an absolutely fantastic piece of kit - the 3D effect
is brilliant and you don't have to wear special glasses. Before you ask
what someone who has just collected his bus pass is doing buying a games
machine, I'd like to point out that it is so much more - for example, ever
since I bought it I've been going round taking 3D snaps with the built-in
cameras and showing them off to anyone who will look (even my mother-in-law was
impressed by the 3D effect). It's also an MP3 player, and there's a download
coming soon that will add an Internet browser. I got it at a good price - I
paid £184 last month in Dixons Duty Free at Stansted Airport, but you can do even better - I've just
noticed that Amazon
are selling the smart black edition (the one I've got) for just £165 with free
shipping.
Talking of Amazon, my most recent
purchase from them was Family
Tree Maker 2011 Platinum Edition, not because I'm ever going to use the
program (I'm very happy with Genopro, as I explained last month), but
because it's by far the cheapest way to get an Ancestry Premium subscription.
For just £29.99 I will get 6 months membership when my existing subscription
runs out, which is an enormous saving compared with the annual subscription
rate of £107.40! When I first wrote about this amazing deal a few months ago the
price quickly shot up to £34.99, so my advice is not to delay - you don't need
to wait for your existing Ancestry subscription to expire (mine doesn't run out
until October).
Yesterday I was linked with yet another
'lost cousin', someone who shares my ancestors from the Coggeshall
area of Essex. Because we are 5th cousins I expect there are few people out there who would question how useful such a distant
connection might be, but they'd be wrong - we're both researching the same
ancestors, which is all that matters! And to be frank we could both do with all
the help we can get on that line, because it currently terminates in 1756 with
a baptism that doesn't name either the father or the mother of the child - how
frustrating!
I made this connection because I had
traced the marriage of great-great-great grandfather's eldest brother's
daughter, found her on the 1881 Census, and entered her on my My Ancestors page. If you haven't been as
successful as I have, it may be because you haven't been as diligent - I've
entered about 700 relatives from the 1881 Census, 1 for every 6 relatives on my
family tree.
Have you tried…
Coincidentally, earlier this week I
discovered an unexpected source for Coggeshall
records - the website of the Coggeshall Museum. There they have transcriptions of
burial records from 1856-1979, a grave register, and non-conformist (Baptist
and Methodist) baptism records.
When we look for online records held locally
we tend to focus on the local records office and the local family history
society - but this discovery is a reminder to cast the net wider. Apart from museums
and local history societies, there are often useful sites run by individuals,
either independently or as part of the Online Parish Clerks project.
I wonder where you'll make an
unexpected discovery?
This is where any amendments or updates
will be 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