Newsletter
- 2nd October 2014
Findmypast
First promises exclusive benefits
Yorkshire
records start arriving at findmypast
Half-price
Genes Reunited subscriptions ENDS MONDAY
Ancestry
discover Dickens in debtors prison
Probate
index for 1996 onwards goes online
1875
Valuation Rolls at Scotlandspeople
Bank of
England offers mortgages - in 1824
Unusual
19th century views of London
Birmingham
Rate Books launch at Ancestry
German
parish registers to go online?
Change
in intestacy rules could help genealogists
Relatives
of adopted adults now able to trace family tree
A
generous helping of genealogical mysteries
Help
yourself to a LostCousins leaflet
Genealogy in the Sunshine 2015
The LostCousins newsletter is
usually published fortnightly. To access the previous newsletter (dated 16th
September) click here, for an index to articles
from 2009-10 click here, for
a list of articles from 2011 click here and for a
list of articles from 2012-13 click here.
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).For your convenience, 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 nothing seems to happen then you may need to enable pop-ups in
your browser or change the settings in your security software, but first try a
different browser (such as the free Chrome browser which I use) .
To go to the main LostCousins
website click the logo at the top of this newsletter. If you're not already a
member, do join - it's FREE, and you'll get an email to alert you whenever
there's a new edition of this newsletter available!
Findmypast First
promises exclusive benefits
Annual subscribers to findmypast.co.uk
are to be offered additional benefits under a scheme dubbed findmypast
First. Benefits include discounted Imperial War Museum membership, a free 12
month subscription to the Lives of the First World War website, monthly
webinars, and discounted magazine subscriptions - you can find out more here. Some benefits may not be available outside the UK.
Yorkshire records
start arriving at findmypast
In February last year findmypast
announced a major collaboration with six archives in Yorkshire, and the day
before yesterday the first phase - comprising nearly 4 million records - went
live. You can see the announcement here.
As you might expect given the number of
archives involved in the project, the records are diverse - and you may need to
spend a little time working out which collections are relevant to your
research. Some parishes appear in more than one collection - the Bishop's Transcripts
largely overlap with the parish registers, although that's not necessarily a
bad thing, because in some cases Bishop's Transcripts will have survived where
the original registers have been lost or damaged. It also improves the chances
of finding records that have been mistranscribed.
Note:
Bishop's Transcripts (often shortened to BTs) are contemporary copies of register
entries that were sent annually to the bishop (or in some cases to an
archdeacon); most parishes were required to produce them from 1598, and if you
come across earlier entries it's worth checking that they haven't been
mistranscribed. It can sometimes be difficult to determine whether you're
looking at the original register or the copy - but I've noticed that the
handwriting tends to be neater and more consistent in BTs. For more information
about BTs see this blog article
on the findmypast site.
Almost all the records in this first
phase are accompanied by images of the relevant registers or Bishop's
Transcripts, but there are a small number of entries for which there are only
transcriptions. This list
shows the parishes for which the original registers are available, and the
years of coverage; this list
shows the equivalent for BTs.
Note:
Yorkshire is divided into three ridings (the word 'riding' is Viking in origin,
and mean a third part). Most of the parishes included in findmypast's Yorkshire
Collection are in the North Riding or East Riding; the primary source of
records for the West Riding is Ancestry.
Half-price Genes Reunited
subscriptions ENDS MONDAY
Just a reminder that until Monday 6th October
you can save 50% on 6 and 12 month Standard subscriptions to Genes
Reunited when you click here
and use the offer code LCFIFTY -
bringing the price down from £15 to £7.50 for a 6 month subscription and £20 to
£10 for a 12 month subscription. (You'll need to enter the offer code on the
payment page.)
Genes Reunited should need no
introduction - originally known as Genes Connected when it launched in early
2003, it was a spin-off from the well-known Friends Reunited site. There are
two main ways to use Genes Reunited - you can search for specific relatives, or
you can upload your tree as a Gedcom file (almost all
family tree programs can export your tree in this format).
It's also possible to build a tree on
Genes Reunited, though I generally wouldn't recommend relying on ANY online
tree as your main repository of data because programs that run on your own
computer are generally more powerful and flexible (Family
Historian is the program I generally recommend when asked).
All Genes Reunited subscriptions now
include 50 free pay-per-view credits, which would normally cost £4.95 - and not
only do you get 50 credits with your initial subscription, you get another 50
every time you renew. Genes Reunited offers access to most of the British
records that you'd find at findmypast, including the British Newspaper Archive.
Tip:
when you meet a cousin at Genes Reunited (or any other site, for that matter),
why not invite them to join LostCousins? Connecting with your cousins through
more than one site helps to ensure that you don't lose touch.
Ancestry discover
Dickens in debtors prison
Charles Dickens' Little
Dorrit was inspired by his father's
imprisonment in the Marshalsea; now Ancestry have
digitised the Commitment and Discharge Books for 1811-42 which in 1824 include
the arrival and release, a few months later, of John Dickins (sic) - you can
search them here.
Also added at the same time were the
Kings Bench and Fleet Prison Discharge Books and Prisoner Lists for 1734-1862,
and you'll find them here.
When his father was imprisoned, 12 year
old Charles was forced to leave school and work in a boot-blacking factory,
sticking labels on pots of blacking - for a 60 hour week he earned just 6
shillings (equivalent to £23 in today's money, if you allow for price
inflation).
John Dickens was only released from the Marshalsea when his mother died, leaving him £450 in 3%
stock (not £450, as some sources state - in early 1824 3% Consols
were trading at around £89 per £100 of stock, so his inheritance would actually
have been worth about £400). You can view the will of Elizabeth Dickens when
you search the London,
England, Wills and Probate, 1507-1858 collection, also at Ancestry.
Probate index for
1996 onwards goes online
The Probate Service for England &
Wales have launched an online index to wills and
administrations from 1996 onwards. It's remarkably up to date - I found entries
where probate had been granted only yesterday, and it includes people who died
as recently as 5 weeks ago.
Since online GRO death indexes only go
up to 2007 it's a handy way to confirm your suspicions that a distant relative
has passed away (though bear in mind that not all estates go to probate), or to
find out their precise date of death.
Unfortunately the only indication of
location is the registry, which can be misleading - for example, it shows as
Birmingham for my aunt (who died in Birmingham), but also for my father (who
died over 100 miles away, in London).
If you decide to order a copy of a will just
click 'Add to basket', then 'Proceed to checkout', and either log-in or
register; you can pay by Visa or Mastercard. The only
downside is that the wills now cost £10 each (the price went up earlier this
year).
Note:
the National
Probate Calendar 1858-1966 at Ancestry is an index to earlier wills proved
in England & Wales.
1875 Valuation Rolls at
Scotlandspeople
Scotlandspeople
have recently added 70,000 images and 900,000 names and addresses from the 1875
Valuation Rolls.
Bank of England offers
mortgages - in 1824
I was glancing through a report on the Bank
of England's half-yearly shareholder's meeting in The Times of 19th March 1824 - OK, I admit I am a little behind in
my reading - when I noticed that the Bank had been making mortgage loans of
between £10,000 (at least £10 million at today's property prices) and £300,000
at an interest rate of just 4%. Clearly they didn't have the same concerns
about the rising prices of property as we do today (the Bank of England have
just acquired new powers to regulate the mortgage market in order to prevent a
housing boom and bust).
Unusual 19th century
views of London
Between 1838-40 the publisher John Tallis
produced 88 pamphlets entitled Tallis's London Street
Views - you could say it was the equivalent of Google Street View for early
Victorians. 87 of the original pamphlets are in the collection of the Museum of
London, and you can view 35 of them (covering the West End) online here.
Only one complete copy of Thomas Milne's
Land Use Map of London & Environs in
1800 exists, in King George III's Topographical Collection at the British
Library, but you can view the map free online here.
As far as I can discern from the markings the different colours represent
arable land (yellow), market gardens (blue), meadows (light green), woods
(bright green), and pastures (pink).
On the same website you'll find London
maps from the first series of Ordnance Survey maps, published from 1805
onwards, Charles Booth's poverty map from 1898, and a 1930s land utilisation
map, mostly compiled by schoolchildren as part of a 'modern Domesday' survey of
the nation. Select the locality of interest from the grid shown here.
Note:
there's an article by Chris Paton in the latest (Autumn 2014) issue of Your
Family Tree entitled "How to Map Lives". He has some interesting
suggestions, such as "How did your ancestors obtain water for daily use?".
I found these photos from the late
19th and early 20th century intriguing. Do you have anything similar in your
collection, I wonder?
As predicted in my November 2012
newsletter over 2.5 million records from 1500 schools went online at findmypast
at the end of September.
This is just the first phase of three -
schools in the first release are from 12 counties: Bedfordshire,
Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Devon,
Huntingdonshire, Kent, Lancashire, Middlesex, Surrey, Wiltshire and
Glamorganshire - as well as Westminster.
The earliest records are from 1870, the
most recent from 1914 - it's a period when education
because compulsory for all, so most of us are going to find relatives in these
records. I found several children from one branch of my family in the Buckinghamshire
registers; in the Hertfordshire records I found a log entry recording that one
of my other cousins had "been taken very sick this morning and had to be
sent home".
You can search the school records here.
Birmingham Rate Books
launch at Ancestry
The day after my last newsletter went to
press Ancestry.co.uk
launched a collection of over 1 million records from rate books for Birmingham
for the period 1831-1913 - you can search them here.
German parish registers
to go online?
One of the very few similarities between
me and the politician Nigel Farage is that we both have German ancestors. I
don't suppose he's much interested in where his came from (his attitude towards
foreign immigrants is somewhat uncompromising), but I've love to track down
mine. However, I've few clues to their precise origins and searching the
records online at FamilySearch hasn't yet resulted in any likely matches.
I was therefore delighted to hear that
there's a project to digitise German parish registers (Kirchenbuch)
and make them available online, albeit for a fee. Currently at the beta stage,
you can find the site here, and
get some idea of the planned coverage here.
Tip:
if you use the Chrome browser, as I do, it will automatically translate pages
into English (it usually does a pretty good job).
The Anglo-German
Family History Society is a great source of information about migration to
the UK from German-speaking countries, and amongst the articles on their site I
found these tables
which indicate the proportion of church registers that have been microfilmed.
The tables also show the proportions of Catholics and Protestants in each
region - the one thing I know about my German ancestors is that they were protestants.
For an introduction to
German migration to the UK I'd recommend an article by Panikos Panayi
entitled The Settlement of Germans in Britain during the Nineteenth
Century - it provides an excellent overview of migration
in the 19th century (the introduction also discusses earlier migrants). I've
also found The
Family Tree German Genealogy Guide a useful reference, even though it's
primarily aimed at the American market.
A few months ago I mentioned that
Professor Rebecca Probert, author of Marriage
Law for Genealogists would be speaking at Buckinghamshire Family
History Society on 2nd July - and one of those listening was Angela, who
thought that you might be interesting in reading the notes that she took.
You'll find them here, together
with notes on some of the other interesting talks that Bucks FHS have enjoyed.
I can't recommend Professor Probert's
book too highly - there is so much confusion about what the legal requirements
were at different times, and only by understanding the law as it really stood
can we properly interpret our ancestors' actions. I'm hoping that she will be
able to join us at Genealogy in the
Sunshine next March so that we can learn more from the research that she
has done, not just into marriage, but also related topics such as divorce and
illegitimacy.
Change in intestacy
rules could help genealogists
Yesterday the Inheritance and Trustees’
Powers Act 2014 came into force. The main effect is to remove the cap on the
amount inherited by the surviving spouse where no valid will has been made, but
one of the minor provisions could affect the information available to family
historians of the future.
Until the new Act came into effect, when
an illegitimate child died intestate neither his father nor his father's family
could inherit - the child’s estate was distributed as if the child’s father and
his family had predeceased the child. That's no longer automatic - if the
father's name appears in the register of births then he and his family will
have the same inheritance rights as if the child had been legitimate.
For many years it has been possible to
re-register an illegitimate birth as legitimate if the parents subsequently
married, but you may not have realised that it's now possible to add the
father's name to the birth register even if the parents haven't married. You
can find out more information here.
Relatives of adopted
adults now able to trace family tree
Last Christmas I reported
the incredible achievement of LostCousins member Frances Lake, who co-ordinates
the Descendants of Deceased Adopted Persons Group, in securing a change in the
law that would eventually allow relatives of adopted persons to trace their
natural parents.
Last week the final piece of the jigsaw
fell into place when Edward Timpson, the Parliamentary Under
Secretary of State for Children and Families (who himself has two adoptive
brothers), announced
a key change in the regulations that puts the new law into effect. Previously,
once an adopted person died there was no way to track down their natural
parents, whether for the purposes of genealogical research, or to identify
hereditary diseases.
We all moan about politicians but
sometimes they do get things right. All we need now is for common sense to
reign over the Home Office, because they're the only ones who can drag the GRO
into the 21st century. At the same time as the welcome changes to adoption regulations
were announced by the Department of Education, the Home Office were firing the
head of the Passport Office - of which the GRO is a part - because of the appalling
backlog of passport applications in the early summer (see this article
from The Guardian).
They say that lightning doesn't strike
in the same place twice, but have a look at this BBC news article from 15
years ago, which reports that passport delays cost over £12m and forced
hundreds of holidaymakers to cancel their trips. Interestingly the IT
contractor responsible for the new system that caused those delays was Siemens,
who were also the contractors responsible for the GRO's abandoned DoVE and MAGPIE projects.
As the inhabitants of
the country that invented the term 'bureaucracy' might say: "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose".
I often pick up useful tips from the
mailing list of the Society of Genealogists - in my opinion it's one of the
most valuable benefits of membership. Recently Irene - who, like many
experienced researchers, is also a LostCousins member - recommended the books
of George Redmonds, a leading historian of names.
I picked up a second-hand - but perfect
- copy of Names
and History: People, Places and Things at Amazon
for less than £3 (including postage), and took it with me to read when I
travelled to Portugal last month to make arrangements for Genealogy in the Sunshine 2015. Whilst many of the examples relate
to Yorkshire - where the author has done much of his research - so weren't of
direct interest to me, it was amazing to discover how frequently other writers
have got it wrong (and to learn how and why they made those errors).
My own surname is said by many to derive
from the village in Derbyshire - and yet most of the people who bore the Calver surname in the 1841 Census (638 out of 843) lived in
Suffolk or Norfolk. There was only one person called Calver
in Derbyshire in 1841 - and he was born out of the county.
And yet, there is a possible route that
may have led to the surname migrating from Derbyshire to East Anglia... perhaps
my DNA project (at Family Tree
DNA) will eventually provide a definitive answer?
Talking of names, yesterday the
Independent reported
that a Welsh parish has changed the spelling of its name for the third time in
150 years - the 't' that was added in the 19th century was removed 6 years ago,
because it was felt to be inauthentic, but has now been restored by popular
demand.
In the parish where I live we also have
a 't' that shouldn't be there - Stansted Mountfitchet
is named after the Norman family who owned the village - Richard de Montfichet was one of the 25 barons who compelled King John
to sign the Magna Carta in 1215 (he also owned the island at Runnymede where
the charter was signed).
The next village to the north is known
as Ugley - and there really IS an Ugley
Women's Institute (and an Ugley Farmers Market, too).
However you'll sometimes find it referred to as Oakley on old maps, and the
1818 book Excursions
in the county of Essex suggests that Oakley was the original name, and
that Ugley was a distortion effected
by Norman scribes - although I'm not convinced by that argument.
The fact, is
many names have become distorted over the years - and in some cases the
'obvious' answer isn't the right one. As ever, family historians have to keep
an open mind until the evidence becomes overwhelming.
A generous helping of
genealogical mysteries
I managed to finish reading The Lost Ancestor on the train
back from London after hearing Donald Davis's excellent talk at the Society of
Genealogists (if anyone there was hoping to speak to me, my apologies for
leaving so suddenly - my return ticket was only valid until 4pm).
As you'd expect from the author of Hiding
the Past it was an extremely well-constructed plot, with plenty of
intrigue and genealogical detail - but all the loose ends were neatly tied up
by the end. This time genealogist Morton Farrier involved Juliette, his
long-term girlfriend - and a trainee policewoman - rather more than he did in
the first book of the series, so it will be interesting to see whether that
trend continues (I'm sure there will be much more to come from the pen of Nathan
Dylan Goodwin, the ingenious author). Available as a paperback, or in Kindle
format, The Lost Ancestor is highly
recommended!
It's less than 3 weeks now to the
release of The
Lost Empress, the new Jefferson Tayte mystery
from Steve Robinson, who is primarily responsible for introducing me - and, I
suspect, many of you - to the genre of genealogical mysteries. You can pre-order
right now at the Amazon site (the book is actually being published by Amazon
under their Thomas & Mercer imprint) and again it's available either as a
paperback or in Kindle format.
Note:
the links above are to the Amazon.co.uk site; if you live in North America please
use the following links:
The
Lost Ancestor @ Amazon.com The Lost Empress @ Amazon.com
The
Lost Ancestor @ Amazon.ca The Lost Empress @ Amazon.ca
Help yourself to a
LostCousins leaflet
I get a lot of requests for leaflets
from members who would like to hand them out to fellow attendees at meetings - so
I've prepared an A4 leaflet in PDF format that you can download here. It can also be used
as a small poster if you prefer.
We discovered this week that the next
version of Windows will be Windows 10 - and not, as one might have expected,
Windows 9. Apparently the jump is to emphasise how different it will be from
Windows 8, which hasn't proved at all popular - although I quite like using it
on my touchscreen laptop, I've stuck with Windows 7 (which is excellent) on my
desktop.
I did at first wonder whether the real
reason for the jump is that somebody else has registered the domain name
Windows9.com - which they have - but it turns out that Windows10.com also
belongs to someone other than Microsoft. (If you fancy speculating on
Microsoft's long-term future I see that Windows34.com is still available!)
When Windows 7 and 8 were introduced
Microsoft offered heavily discounted pre-release prices to build momentum. I
never used the two copies of Windows 8 I bought to upgrade my existing
computers as originally intended, but fortunately I found I was able to sell
them at a useful profit when the introductory offer ended. So even if you're
not sure about upgrading to Windows 10, it might be worth picking up a copy at
the pre-release price - although you may have to wait until the second half of
next year for the release.
Genealogy in the Sunshine 2015
I have just got back from Portugal and
the Rocha Brava resort on the Algarve coast, which was the venue for the
inaugural Genealogy in the Sunshine
and will also host the 2015 course, which takes place from 14th-21st March.
A number of potential attendees who will
be coming on their own have asked whether it is possible to share an apartment.
The answer is "Yes" - a 2 bedroom apartment is only slightly more
expensive than a 1 bedroom apartment, and if two people travelling on their own
were to share, the cost for each would be under £16 a night (based on current
exchange rates).
There will be a few changes in the
format from this year's course, partly because there will be some people who
came in 2014 and others who are attending for the first time in 2015, but also
because there are likely to be more people attending.
Those of you who are as interested in
the sunshine as the genealogy (or who are bringing non-participating friends or
relatives), will be interested to know that next March we'll have access to a covered heated pool.
I'll shortly be circulating more
information to those who have expressed interest - in the meantime, if you
haven't already been in touch, please do so right away.
In March 2013 I wrote in this column:
"How
would you like to earn 10.4% tax-free with inflation-linking on top - it sounds
too good to be true, doesn't it? Oh, and by the way, this particular investment
is backed by the British Government!"
It wasn't too good to be true, but it
was too good to last - from April 2016 the government are slashing the increase
you can earn by deferring your State Pension from 10.4% per annum (1% for every
5 weeks) to just 5.8% per annum (1% for every 9 weeks).
Fortunately, if you reach pension age before
6th April 2016 - and I'm glad to say that I'll beat the deadline by about 6
months - you can still secure the higher rate. I'm planning to defer my pension
for 8 or 9 years, but if you only qualify for the lower rate it's hardly worth
deferring at all.
That's not the only change that takes
effect in 2016 - currently if you defer your pension you have the option of
taking a lump sum, which is calculated by taking the pension you have foregone
and adding compound interest at 2% over base rate. That option won't be
available under the new system, nor - so far as I can see - will the extra
State Pension you've earned by deferring be inheritable by your spouse, as it
usually is under the existing system.
Everyone's financial situation is
different, so just because that I'm deferring my pension doesn't mean that you
should defer yours - nevertheless, the fact that the terms will be so much
worse after 2016 certainly suggests that for many people who will reach pension
age in the next 18 months the present system provides a great opportunity. Want
to know more? I'm not a financial advisor, but I can direct you to the government
guide here (though you'll probably find the Which? guide easier to follow).
Talking of Which?,
later this year elections will be held to fill 3 vacancies on the Council
which governs the Consumer's Association - and if you have been a subscriber to
Which? magazine for at least one year you'll be
entitled to vote. Don't discard the papers when they arrive towards the end of
November - last year only 3 of the 10 candidates were successful, so your vote
could make all the difference. And if you're not a subscriber, despite the many
recommendations in this column, sign up now
and you'll be able to vote next year!
I was delighted to read today that the
payday lender Wonga is writing off £220 million of debts owed by 330,000
customers following a 'voluntary' agreement between the company and its
regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority. The customers to benefit will be
those who would never have been offered loans in the first place if the
affordability rules now being introduced had applied at the time. Thank
goodness the FCA is getting to grips with things in a way that the Financial
Services Authority, its predecessor, never seemed to manage!
Tesco have also been in the news
recently for all the wrong reasons - thankfully I sold the Tesco shares in my
personal pension about 7 years ago (at nearly twice the current price). Why did
I sell? Because I realised that they were losing money on some of the goods
they were selling - indeed, at one time I was able to buy bottles of wine for
less than nothing once bonus Clubcard points were
taken into account.
Of course, as a customer (rather than a
shareholder) I was delighted to pick up bargains - and still am, especially
when I turn up just as they're making their final reductions. For example, this
week I bought two bags of salad reduced to 14p each, which earned me 25 bonus Clubcard points - worth anything from 25p to 75p, depending
how I use them - and I bought a large pizza for 40p. At my local superstore the
final reductions happen at around 7.30pm Monday to Friday (though Friday isn't
usually a good day for bargains); however, it could be different at your store.
Earlier in the day the reductions can be as little as 10% - so it's well worth
retiming your shopping trips if you can.
This is where I'll post any last minute
additions.
Thanks for taking the time to read my
newsletter - I hope you find it useful.
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2014 Peter Calver
You
MAY link to this newsletter or email a link to your friends and relatives without
asking for permission in advance. I have included bookmarks so you can link to
a specific article: right-click on the relevant entry in the table of contents
at the beginning of this newsletter to copy the link.
Please
DO NOT re-publish any part of this newsletter, other
than the list of contents at the beginning, without permission - either on your
own website, in an email, on paper, or in any other format. It is better for
all concerned to provide a link as suggested above, not least because articles
are often updated.