LostCousins newsletter

Newsletter - January 2, 2010

CONTENTS

Save 15% at findmypast until January 13th
Make a great start to 2010
Winning strategies for family historians
Missing sections of the 1851 Census
Volunteer transcribers are always needed
Child migration
Government responds to National Archives petition
Visiting the National Archives at Kew
Meet a real-life Victorian Farmer!
CanadianHeadstones.com
More search options for the Ireland 1911 Census
How to add this newsletter to your 'favourites'
Peter's Tips
Have you tried….?
Stop Press

To visit the main LostCousins site please go to www.LostCousins.com or click here if you need a password reminder. It's free to join LostCousins, so if you've been sent this newsletter (or a link to this newsletter) by someone else, I hope you'll register in your own right - and take part in the great LostCousins project.

If you missed the previous LostCousins newsletter (dated 15/12/09), or would like to see it again, click here. All newsletters since February 2009 are still available online, and because each links to the one before you can easily step back through all of them.

Save 15% at findmypast until January 13th
If you've been kicking yourself for not taking advantage of the introductory offer, then you've a chance to redeem yourself. For the next week you can get 15% off ALL subscriptions at findmypast, the ONLY site that has a complete set of England & Wales censuses from 1841-1911. Even at the normal price subscriptions work out far cheaper than buying credits, so you can save twice over by subscribing now.

Click here to go straight to the offer page, and make sure you enter the promotional code EGGNOG (all one word) to get your discount. Until you enter the code the FULL prices will be shown. Findmypast have stated that this is the best offer they'll be making to new members in 2010 - miss out now and you'll probably regret it.

Note: if you already have a findmypast subscription but want to upgrade there are special offers for you too, but you'll need to visit the website to find out the details.

Make a great start to 2010
There are more LostCousins members than ever before - 76,709 at the last count - and therefore more opportunities than ever before to find new cousins.

Nevertheless, I shall continue to answer every email personally - I believe it's the personal touch that makes LostCousins different from other sites, because most of the problems you come across in your research will be ones I've come across in mine. However, please bear in mind that I can only help with research issues if you've completed your My Ancestors page - otherwise it wouldn't be fair to the many members who are taking part in this unique project.

LostCousins is all about linking members with their living relatives, but I think some people reading this newsletter have forgotten this - because when I look down the list I can see people who have been members for 1, 2, 3, or even 4 years yet haven't entered any data on their My Ancestors page, and others who have entered just a handful. If you're one of them, then please remember that only when you enter your relatives from the 1881 Census (or any of the other censuses we support) will your cousins be able to find you, and only then will you be able to search for them simply by clicking a button.

Amazingly over 1 million of the inhabitants of England & Wales who were recorded on the 1881 Census have now been entered by LostCousins members - roughly 1 for each page of the census. This means that when you enter a relative from that census, there's a 1 in 25 chance that your entry will match with an entry made by a living relative. I'm not a betting man, but to me that seems like good odds - spend half an hour entering relatives on your My Ancestors page and you've got a good chance of finding a new cousin instantly.

However it's not just about instant results: the data only needs to be entered once, so you're also making an investment for the future (the future of your family tree). That's because once you've entered your data, the rest is automatic!

Log-in from time to time and click the Search button if you want to, but if not we'll email you when a relative of yours wants to get in touch. As more members join and more members enter their data, you'll make more and more connections without having to do anything. (And remember that the LostCousins matching system is so accurate that most members will never experience an inaccurate match, even if they live to 100!)

There has never been a better time to look for 'lost cousins' - why not make a great start to 2010 by finding a new branch of your tree!

Winning strategies for family historians
Have you ever heard it said of someone, "he's his own worst enemy"? You know - when somebody has the opportunity to succeed, but pig-headedly ploughs along the same furrow instead of looking around for better ways of doing things.

I see it happen all the time. People write to me asking how they can solve a specific problem, but they don't listen to the advice they get - not just from me, but from others too. Even I occasionally suffer from this failing - this year one of my 'lost cousins' included with my Christmas card the solution to a problem I'd be puzzling over for years (thanks, Mary!). Why hadn't I been able to solve it, with my years of experience helping thousands of others solve their problems? Because I was looking in the wrong place!

Let me talk you through some strategies that you can use to make sure that you don't fall into this trap. Follow this advice and you'll not only be better at solving your own problems, you'll be in a better position to help others solve theirs.

Look around the problem - in other words, don't simply search for one fact at a time, look for other information about the same person, or the same family. For example, if you can't find somebody in a specific census year, look for them in other years - you may learn something that helps you find them in the missing year. If that doesn't work, look them up in the birth indexes - perhaps they changed their name, or lied about their age, in which case you won't find them where they should be.
Learn from experience - isn't it great when somebody more experienced in genealogy gives you advice? Apparently insuperable problems suddenly look a whole lot easier to solve. Well, the simple fact is that you can be that more experienced researcher; you can be the one that makes the problems look easy. How can you achieve this? Simply by learning new techniques and new facts as you go about your research. When you're up against a 'brick wall' that you can't get over, don't bang your head against it - look for ways around. And if you can't find a way around, go and research a different part of your tree, because in so doing you could gain the extra experience that will help you get over the original 'brick wall'.
Be lucky - there's a story that has been going around for many years about a famous golfer (it was Gary Player the first time I heard it) who was approached by fan who asked him how he managed to be so lucky when he was playing golf. "It’s a funny thing", he said, "the more I practise, the luckier I get!" There's a lesson there for all of us: the more effort we put into our research, the more likely we are to have some good fortune - like the valuable clue that my 'lost cousin' spotted amongst a selection of memorial cards sent to her by one of her cousins.
Be generous - be prepared to help others, especially your living relatives. Don't be one of those people who focuses only on "what can I get out of it", think also about what you can give. For example, when you're taking part in the LostCousins project don't leave out whole sections of your family tree because you've 'finished' those branches - because there will be others out there, cousins of yours, who would be very grateful to share that knowledge. So what if they can't tell you any more than you already know? If you are not interested in helping your own cousins, then I'm afraid you've come to the wrong site.

Missing sections of the 1851 Census
In my last newsletter I mentioned that findmypast has a detailed list of sections of the 1841, 1861, and 1871 England & Wales censuses that are missing. I'm grateful to Scott in New Zealand who reminded me that Ancestry has a list of missing sections of the 1851 Census.

Scott also mentioned that he'd found relatives on the 1851 Census at findmypast who were missing from the Ancestry version - not because of a bad transcription, but because the records for that district were completely missing. Some time ago findmypast announced that they were adding 160,000 individuals whose records were previously omitted from all published versions of the 1851 Census, because the original pages had been badly damaged - see the press release on the findmypast site for more details.

Volunteer transcribers are always needed
The missing records mentioned above were transcribed in a 14 year project by Manchester and Lancashire Family History Society. That's just one example of the contribution that volunteers make - another is the National Burial Index.

Of course, just because information is transcribed by volunteers doesn't mean that it's available free of charge to everyone - family history societies often raise money by selling CD ROMs and microfiche, and on a larger scale the Federation of Family History Societies used to have an extensive pay-per-view site with records drawn from most of its member societies (most of those records are now online at findmypast). But two major websites do make their information available free of charge - FreeBMD and FamilySearch - and if you are looking to contribute to the genealogical community both are worthy causes.

I know that many LostCousins members already transcribe for FreeBMD. Muriel, one of LostCousins' staunchest supporters, very much enjoyed her time working with the Scan2 syndicate - and she pointed out that as one of the organisers of that syndicate lives in Canada, and the other in Britain, distance is clearly not an issue. Click here to see a list of the syndicates, all of which seem to be looking for more volunteers.

Child migration
I suspect that most people reading this newsletter will be aware of the large number of children who were sent to Canada between 1870-1957, and may even have visited sites such as The British Home Children, created by Perry Snow in Alberta, and which records 56,000 British children who ended up in Canada.

But it was only when I heard a chance remark recently that I began to investigate child migration to Australia which - so I discovered - continued into the 1960s. There is a list of official records in Australia at the Council of Australasian Archives and Records Authorities site, which was compiled in response to an enquiry titled Lost Innocents: Righting the Record. There are many links to online sources, but inevitably many of the records are not available online.

Thanks to Jennifer, one of our expert Australian members, I found an excellent guide by Cora Num to Shipping and Immigration Records. If you suspect that any of your relatives migrated to Australia, whether as children or adults, it is a great place to start looking for evidence with countless links to online resources and fact sheets. Cora's site also has hundreds of other links to key sites for those researching their Australian connections - there's an overview on her home page.

Another surprise was to find that child migration from Britain began as early as 1619, when 100 vagrant children were sent from London to the North American colony of Virginia - this was one of many fascinating discoveries I made in A Child Migration Timeline, which I found at a site related to Barnardos (The Goldonian - named after Goldings, a large country house acquired by Dr Barnardo homes in 1921 and opened as a school the following year).

Government responds to National Archives petition
Last year I enlisted the support of LostCousins members for a petition to keep the National Archives open on Mondays. The Prime Minister's Office has now responded to signatories (over half of whom are LostCousins members), and even if you didn't sign the petition you might like to read the response. Personally I found the comment that "research….. shows that less than 0.5% of their users use the facilities for a six day calendar week" quite pointless - take that to its ultimate conclusion and we'll end up with TNA only open for one day a year!

Visiting the National Archives at Kew
If you want to ensure that this valuable archive remains as accessible as possible, do please pay a visit. A few months ago I added to the Help & Advice page an excellent guide for anyone visiting the National Archives for the first time. Compiled by LostCousins member Celia Heritage of Heritage Family History, this guide has just been expanded and updated with a particular emphasis on military records - take a look, even if you're not planning a visit to Kew in the near future.

Meet a real-life Victorian Farmer!
Celia also gave me advance notice of a she is running in 2010 which is certain to be a sell-out. How many of you have enjoyed watching the fabulous BBC TV series Victorian Farm? What a wonderful series it was, illustrating how our ancestors really lived.

Ruth Goodman, one of the leading characters from the series, will be lecturing at the Heritage Family History course "My Victorian Ancestor" on Saturday April 24th in Chatham, Kent. Ruth will be talking about how our ancestors lived in both town and country and also about the life of the Victorian woman. In between the well-known genealogist and writer Celia Heritage from Heritage Family History will be taking a fresh look at GRO and Census records, how we can get the most from them, and also what to do when you hit a brick wall. The course costs £38 and further information and booking details can be found via the Heritage Family History website, or by ringing 01797 344376. Don't delay, as capacity is very limited. Should you need accommodation, there are suggestions on the links page of Celia's website.

A course that will be of interest to beginners, or those who have limited experience runs over five Thursday evenings starting on February 25th - the venue is near Ashford in Kent. The course covers GRO records, census, parish register, wills and much more - all for £66, which includes a year's support for your own research! Contact details as above.

CanadianHeadstones.com
LostCousins member James McKane runs CanadianHeadstones.com which already has over 23,000 photographic records of gravestones all over Canada. I hope that you'll support Jim's volunteer project, not just by searching for photographs of your relatives' headstones, but also by contributing any relevant photos that you may have.

More search options for the Ireland 1911 Census
New search options have been added to the Ireland 1911 census, which is available FREE online. I'm still hoping that we'll be able to add this census to the list of censuses supported at LostCousins, but first there are a few technical issues to be resolved.

How to add this newsletter to your 'favourites'
You may have noticed that the web address (or URL) for this newsletter is the same as for the previous edition (and the one before) - indeed, from now on the latest newsletter will always be on the same web page. That's because I don't want you to have to wait for my email to arrive to read the newsletter - you can check the page at any time to see whether there's a new edition, or an update to the existing edition (in which case it will be under Stop Press).

Why not add the newsletter page to your 'favourites'? To do this using Internet Explorer click on Favourites, then Add to favourites (if you have the latest version of IE you can simply click to add a link to your toolbar). To create a new bookmark in Firefox click

Peter's Tips
Have you ever switched on your PC, only to discover that it doesn't fire up, apparently because the hard drive isn't recognised? This happened to me a week ago, and has been happening every day since then - isn't it typical, a computer going wrong just after the warranty runs out?

Of course, the worst thing is not being able to access your data, and the possibility that you might lose it for ever. Fortunately I learnt a little trick years ago, when I had exactly the same problem with an earlier computer, and as a result I'm still able to use my computer normally - otherwise you wouldn't be reading this now! All I do is tap the F8 button once a second as the computer powers up. Within 10 or 15 seconds a blue screen appears with a list of boot devices (drives to you and me) and I simply choose the hard drive that I normally boot from. Hey presto, all is well! I can't guarantee that if you encounter a similar problem it will work for you, but it has always worked for me.

Have you tried...?
Mobile broadband has made more difference to me than any other recent invention. It's allowed me to travel without worrying that on my return I'll have an inbox with 500 requests for help from LostCousins members, and it's allowed me to access my favourite genealogy sites when I've been out and about - yet amazingly I've still only used half the free credit I got when I bought my broadband dongle back in the summer! The only time I've spent £30 to better effect was when I took my wife-to-be out to lunch for the first time.

There are, of course, any number of mobile broadband offers. But I can't find another which has no monthly commitment and everlasting credit (ie it doesn't expire after 30 days). Click here to find out more...

UPDATE: I have just discovered that Vodafone have withdrawn their original offer with effect from January 1st - please check out the new terms before purchasing.

Stop Press
This is where updates or amendments will appear.

That's all for now - I hope you've found some of it relevant to you and your family tree. Please do keep sending in your comments and suggestions for future issues.

Peter Calver

Founder, LostCousins