Newsletter - 25 December 2010

 

 

 

Seasonal offers abound!

Save 15% at findmypast

Rewards for loyalty

Another amazing coincidence

Would you Adam & Eve it?

Climb every mountain

How to search more successfully

Making a silk purse from a sow's ear

Learning about Poor Law records

Am I mad?

LostSiblings.com?

BBC iPlayer to go international

Census may yet survive

Peter's tips

Stop Press

 

About this newsletter

The LostCousins newsletter is published twice a month on average, and all LostCousins members are notified by email when a new edition is available (unless they opt out). To access the previous newsletter (dated 15 December 2010) please click here. Each newsletter links to the one before, and you can go back to February 2009 when the newsletter first went online; in due course there will be an online index to articles.

 

Whenever possible links are included to the websites or articles mentioned in the newsletter (they are highlighted in blue or purple and underlined, so you can't miss them). Note: when you click on a link a new browser window or tab will open so that you don’t lose your place in the newsletter - you may need to enable pop-ups (if the link seems not to work look for a warning message at the top of the browser window).

 

Although these newsletters are hosted at LostCousins, they are not part of the main website. Click here to go to the main website and take part in the LostCousins project to link relatives around the world.

 

Seasonal offers abound!

This is usually the time of the year when retailers and manufacturers cut their prices in an attempt to reduce their stocks, and 2010 is no exception. I've created a separate page listing all the offers that I think will be of interest to LostCousins members, and I'll update it as new information becomes available. Click here to see the offers (as with all the links in my newsletters, the page will open in a separate window - or a new tab, depending which browser you're using).

 

IMPORTANT: I'll be updating the offers page as news comes in of new offers, and alterations to existing offers - so you might want to bookmark the page and check back from time to time

 

Save 15% at findmypast

In my last newsletter I published a code that allowed you to get extra credits - but I expressed my hope that I'd be able to arrange a discount on subscriptions, since for researchers whose ancestors came from England & Wales a subscription is usually by far the cheapest solution. I can remember spending £150 in one year on credits for the 1901 Census - now you can get a year's unlimited access to all 8 censuses for little more than half that (if only I could turn the clock back!).

 

Anyway, there is a special offer that officially begins on 26th December - but as a LostCousins member you can take advantage of it right now by clicking here and entering MERRYFMP in the Promotional Code box before you click the Subscribe button. But that's not all - if you follow the instructions on my special offers page you can also get a free subscription to LostCousins worth up to £12.50!

 

Rewards for loyalty

Findmypast is one of the few genealogy sites to reward subscribers who renew by giving a loyalty discount, currently 20%. I think that's a really sensible approach - it helps to keep their costs down, and it helps to keep your costs down too! For full details of the findmypast loyalty scheme click here.

 

Another amazing coincidence

In the last newsletter I wrote about the totally unexpected discovery of a newspaper article mentioning my uncle in a scrapbook I bought at an auction, and this prompted Rebecca to tell me of a similarly amazing coincidence:

 

"My great uncle John Thomas Wyer was killed in WW1, so his medals and the memorial plaque were sent to his parents. For whatever reason my Nan gave the medals and plaque to one of John's sister's grandchildren. The medals and plaque were lost to us, and the family rumour mill said that they would have been sold. I have since found out the medals are with John's great great nephew, and still in the family, but the plaque no one knew about.

 

"I was bored on 31st October this year so for fun put my maiden name into eBay - and discovered that my great uncle's memorial plaque (in the original envelope), was being sold by a dealer, but with just 27 minutes left before the auction ended! Needless to say I bought it, and it is now back home and treasured by the great niece he never met."

 

Would you Adam & Eve it?

Until recently it was thought that the origins of homo sapiens were straightforward. However in May I reported that researchers had discovered that between 1 and 4% of the human genome has been inherited from Neanderthals, indicating that homo sapiens and Neanderthals were able to interbreed, a quite unexpected result. What I didn't mention at the time is that this interbreeding appears to have occurred in Europe and Asia, and that Africans typically don't have any Neanderthal genes.

 

Now the picture is getting more complicated. Over the past two years scientists have been analysing DNA from a tooth and finger bone found in a cave in Siberia, and whilst this might seem slender evidence it has been sufficient to allow them to identify a new branch of the human family tree. Dubbed 'Denisovans' (after the cave where they were found) these people shared a distant common ancestor with the Neanderthals - but what is particularly interesting is that they too appear to have interbred with humans, but only Melanesians - found today in Papua New Guinea.

 

It has been calculated that Melanesians are about 6% Denisovan, whilst the estimate for Neanderthal genes inherited by most other humans has been refined to between 2.5 and 3%. Some scientists are now speculating that there are other, yet to be discovered, branches that have contributed to the modern day human genome - and logically this seems quite likely, considering what a new field of investigation this is.

 

What I find intriguing is that the Neanderthals and Denisovans survived as separate sub-species until relatively recently - perhaps 30-40,000 years ago, which may sound like a long time but is really only a blip in evolutionary terms. Was there some tumultuous event, such as an ice age, global warming, or meteorite collision that eliminated all branches other than us? What implications does this research have for the deep-ancestry DNA tests that purport to tell us where our ancestors originated, or for the politically-correct view that all modern humans share the same ancestry?

 

To find out more check out this article at the USA Today website, and the official press release (in English) from the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig.

 

Note: depending on your ancestry, you may or may not be aware that 'Would you Adam & Eve it?' is Cockney rhyming slang for 'Would you believe it?'.

 

Climb every mountain

Climb every mountain,

Search high and low,

Follow every highway,

Every path you know.

 

Climb every mountain,

Ford every stream,

Follow every rainbow,

'Till you find your dream.

 

I have fond memories of The Sound of Music, having seen the film at the cinema as a teenager - it was probably the last time I went to the cinema with my parents. But it was only recently that I realised how appropriate Climb Every Mountain is for family historians - we sometimes do have to climb every mountain and search a multitude of different pathways before we eventually reach our goal.

 

Sadly there are times when we get to our destination a little too late, and discover that a relative that we'd love to have met and talked to has passed away. It's when something like that happens that I realise how important it is to take advantage of new sources as they become available, rather than seeking to save a few pounds by waiting. For example, I know there are a lot of Ancestry subscribers who are waiting for the 1911 England & Wales Census to become available on that site - yet it's been available at other sites for nearly two years. I've added over 500 relatives to my tree by combining the information from the 1911 Census with the incredibly useful fully-indexed birth and marriage indexes that are available both at Ancestry and findmypast - and if your ancestors were English I've no doubt that you could too!

 

How to search more successfully

Recently I read a reader's letter to one of the family history magazines. Amazingly it was the Letter of the Month, but personally I'd have made the author stand in the corner wearing a dunce's cap! Here's how the letter began:

 

I have been researching my family for over 13 years and haven't done any of it online. On the odd occasion when I have been given a free trial, I have entered details from a birth, marriage, or death certificate in front of me, and on every occasion the results have been 'No Matches Found'.

 

To tell you the truth I've heard similar stories a few times over the years, and in almost case the solution is very simple - enter less information on the search form and allow for minor discrepancies, such as incorrect birthplaces, misspelled names, and ages a year or two out. Now that we can see the Household Schedules from the 1911 Census we know that it wasn't just enumerators and transcribers who made mistakes- our ancestors got things wrong too.

 

Other important tips:

 

 

Tip: If I get no results when I search a new database the next thing I do is search for 'John Smith'. If I don't get any results for that search either, I can be pretty certain that there's something I've misunderstood!

 

Making a silk purse from a sow's ear

The sow's ear in this case is the collection of Enumerators' Summary Books from the 1911 England & Wales census, which whilst a useful addition to the household schedules (as at findmypast), can be pretty useless on their own - as many Ancestry subscribers will have realised. That's because the only people listed are the heads of household, and in most cases they are shown as Mr So-and-so, with no forename or even an initial. True, if you know exactly where the family were living you've got a good chance of finding them, but when you do, the only additional information you'll glean is how many males and females there were in the household.

 

The good news is that rather than having to wait for months for Ancestry to add the household schedules, you can take the very basic information from the summary and use it to get extra information completely free at the 1911census.co.uk website! Here's how it works….

 

I decided to search for my great-grandfather, John Calver - I knew from his daughter's marriage certificate where he was living just before the census. Whilst it's a fairly common name - according to findmypast there were 48 John Calvers on the 1911 Census - when I typed 'John Calver' into Ancestry it didn't find a single one! (Note: I ticked 'Exact matches only' because I didn't want my Calvers to be overwhelmed by Calverts, Calverleys &co).

 

The next thing I tried was to enter 'J Calver', in the hope that enumerator wrote down his initial on the summary - but sadly none of the 5 that came up were living anywhere near London.

 

Next I searched for 'Calver', which produced 352 results - rather more than I wanted, so I limited the search to Middlesex. At first is wasn't clear how I could do this, because there isn't a County field on the search form - but by experimentation I discovered that typing 'Middlesex' into the Keywords box seemed to work. And there he was, living at 'Knightshages Lot Holders', which was close enough to 'Knightshayes Cottages, Holders Hill' for me to recognise the address.

 

Now I clicked on 'View record' (not 'View image') so that I could note down the census references; these were shown as RG 78 Piece 349, Household schedule number 283. I also noted that there was precisely one male and one female living in the household. Next I went to 1911census.co.uk and clicked 'Search the 1911 Census', then 'Show advanced fields'. I filled in only two boxes on the Search form, entering the surname as 'Calver' and the census references as 'RG78PN349 SN283'. This produced precisely two results, as you can see here:

 

 

Remember, this additional information hasn't cost me a penny - indeed, I didn't even have to sign-in or register at 1911census.co.uk! Of course, we’d all love to see more information, and because I have a findmypast subscription I can (all findmypast subscriptions include full access to the 1911 England & Wales census). But if you can't afford to subscribe to findmypast, even with the 15% discount (which brings the cheapest subscription down to just £33.96), then it's a cost-free way to add to your knowledge.

 

Note: if the surname is a common one you may find that more than one household is displayed; in this case you'll need to utilise your knowledge of the family to identify which individuals are family members. Similarly, there may also be people in the household you're interested in who have a different surname (eg a married daughter, mother-in-law,  or lodger). The number of males and females in the household provides a useful cross-check.

 

Learning about Poor Law records

If you've read The People of the Abyss, recommended in my last newsletter, you'll be aware just how many poor people there were in Britain in the 19th and early 20th centuries. There can be few amongst us who do not have ancestors who did not spend time in the workhouse, or rely on hand-outs for their existence - there are certainly plenty of them in my tree.

 

But whilst many Poor Law records have survived, there are very few available online - and this may be why they tend to be disregarded by most researchers. A lot of London records can be found at Ancestry, where they form part of the London Metropolitan Archive collection - but sadly they haven't been indexed, so it's a question of browsing through page by page until you find something of interest.

 

A good place to start is the Sussex Record Society site, because you can get a good idea of what records were kept from the online transcriptions. Even though I don't have ancestors from Sussex, this list of different types of orders proved very interesting - I didn't realise there were so many!

 

Poor Law records are in most cases held by the relevant county archive - why not ask what's available the next time you pay them a visit?

 

Am I mad?

I had an email recently from a member who wrote: "Thank you for your full and thoughtful reply. You must be a very nice man, even if you are slightly mad, as all the best people are."

 

I was a little taken aback at first, but then I stumbled across an article I'd cut out from The Times in June 1999, headlined "Why a touch of madness boosts creativity", and referring to Dickens, Newton, Churchill and many others. Whilst I certainly wouldn't pretend to be in the same class as those great men, I suspect that what we have in common is a dogged determination: in my case, if there's something that needs doing, then I'll do it - my rationale being that if I don't, then nobody else will.

 

7 years ago I set myself a challenge - to link-up cousins around the world without compromising their privacy, or asking them to publish details of their family tree where other people could see them; furthermore I was determined that whatever system I came up with should be accurate - as close to 100% accurate as I could make it. Nobody else had done it, so perhaps I was mad even to try - but try I did, and the result was LostCousins!

 

LostSiblings.com?

The Donor Sibling Registry is an international group which aims to link people who have been conceived using donor eggs or sperm to find siblings (latterly using DNA samples), and it can also connect donors with their genetic offspring. In the same way as I spotted a need, and decided to fill it, so did Wendy Kramer and her son Ryan.

 

It's clearly a more controversial project than LostCousins, but nevertheless it's a shining example of how extraordinary achievements can result from the determination of ordinary people.

 

BBC iPlayer to go international

Over the years I've had many emails from members outside the UK who are disappointed not to be able to watch BBC programmes such as Who Do You Think You are?, so I was delighted to learn that the BBC plans to offer overseas access to BBC iPlayer. The bad news is that whereas the service is free within the UK, it's likely to be pay-per-view for overseas viewers, although the BBC may also consider introducing a subscription option.

 

Census may yet survive

In the December edition of RSS News, the newsletter of the Royal Statistical Society, there's a letter signed by the director of the England & Wales census and the Registrars General for Scotland and Northern Ireland, in which they stress that no decision has yet been taken about the future of the census.

 

However, reading between the lines, it seems that they are primarily concerned that premature talk about the demise of the census might lead to a lower response in 2011 - and in any case, it won't be they who take the final decision, but the respective parliaments.

 

Peter's tips

I'm glad to say that since my last newsletter I've only had one hoax email sent to me a LostCousins member. Remember, any email that asks you to send it to everyone in your address book is almost certainly a hoax, a con, or a virus (and possibly all three).

 

Security issues always make the headlines, and when a discussion site was hacked recently hundreds of thousands of passwords were stolen - potentially a serious problem for anyone who used the same password at other sites. How do you deal with passwords? Do you have a different password for every site, which means that it's difficult to remember them all - or do you have a handful of passwords that you use at multiple sites?

 

I recently discovered a free program called LastPass which will keep track of all your passwords, storing them in a secure vault, and - if you wish - filling them in automatically whenever you visit a site. It will even generate random passwords for you - but the really clever thing is that it can remember more than one set of log-in details for each site, a feature that I find enormously useful. For example, since I do most of the research for my wife's family tree I need to be able to log-in to her LostCousins account as well as mine.

 

Stop Press

This is where updates and corrections will be recorded.

 

That's all for now - it is Christmas Day, after all!

 

peter_signature

 

Peter Calver

Founder, LostCousins