11/4/2017 LostCousins newsletter

The LostCousins newsletter is usually published fortnightly. To access the previous newsletter (dated 30th March) click here; to find earlier articles use the customised Google search below (it searches ALL of the newsletters since February 2009, so you don't need to keep copies):

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Curiosity: it's why we do what we do!

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it's the lifeblood of family historians. Some of the best stories I've heard from LostCousins members have resulted from simple curiosity - spotting something interesting or anomalous, then tenaciously following it wherever it leads. Sometimes the members concerned found nothing of direct relevance to their own family history, but nevertheless they still learned something - the advantages of curiosity and tenacity are the way in which they sharpen our research skills.

Recently I spotted this lot in an auction catalogue:

The auctioneers' description was "A postcard album, with World War I era cards, photographs including loose, (qty)" - not something that would normally interest me, but since the auction house is based in the village where I live I decided to take a look.

Some of the photographs were absolutely fabulous - I thought this wedding scene was wonderful:

Just look at those spats! Some of the photos had names and dates on the back, and before long I'd discovered whose wedding it was - and I strongly suspected that all the photos had come from the same family.

One of my all-time favourite TV dramas is Stephen Poliakoff's Shooting the Past, which had a big impact on me when I saw it in 1999 - the story of a photographic library which is about to be dissipated following a takeover. I loved the way that the photos in the archive were used to weave a story and the more I looked through the photos in the auction lot the more convinced I became that I should buy it, and try to find out the story behind them.

But in the end I didn't buy the lot for the photos. Why not? Because I bought it for a completely different reason, one that inspired the next article….

Insights into the 1939 Register: Part 2 EXCLUSIVE

In the first part of this series I described how the numbers on identity cards came about, and explained that - whilst the numbers were originally based on a person's whereabouts in September 1939 - they didn't change when someone moved house, or even when a woman acquired a new surname as a result of her marriage. Indeed, because - in England, at least - the same numbers were used for NHS cards even after identity cards were abolished at the end of 1951 some people kept their numbers for half a century.

For the second part of the series I'm going to show how identity card numbers - references from the 1939 Register - were used by employers during World War 2, focusing on The Preston Sheet Metal Co. in Willesden, north west London. In the process I'll provide some examples from the company's own records, and then show the corresponding entries in the 1939 Register.

The chances are that someone reading this newsletter will be related to one of the people who worked for the company but as the examples I've chosen all related to open records in the 1939 Register I don't think that I'll be intruding on anyone's privacy. (Either way, I'd be very interested to hear from anyone who knows of the company.)

The book I discovered hidden amongst the photo albums of the auction lot contained handwritten records of employees - and the very first entry was for Leslie Robert Foskett who joined the company c1929 when he would have been 16 years old. My next step was to search the 1939 Register, looking for a Leslie Foskett born around 1913 - and there was only one:

Note that whist the address is different, the Letter Code, Schedule, and Schedule Sub Number (BXAE/116/1) match the information given in the company's records. And we now know what sort of products the company was producing - panels for aircraft.

Intriguingly there's a closed entry in the register immediately below the entry for Leslie Foskett, although the transcription doesn't mention that there are any closed records in the household. A search of the GRO marriage registers showed that in the second quarter of 1939 Leslie R Foskett married Phyllis J Payne, and since there was someone of that name whose birth was registered in Willesden in 1918, I suspect that the closed record relates to her.

Going back to the records of The Preston Sheet Metal Co. you'll notice that there is a column headed 'Registration Number', and that the reference shown for Leslie Foskett is WPF 10097. Looking at the other entries I noticed that these references only appear when there is an entry in the 'Labour Exchange' column, so I suspect that they have nothing to do with the 1939 Register or identity cards, but might indicate an employee who was sourced from the relevant exchange (these establishments still survive, but we now call them 'Job Centres').

Most of the entries attributed to the St Mary's Rd exchange are prefixed WPF, though a few have the prefix EXX, and I spotted one HFL - perhaps someone reading this article will be able to interpret these references?

As with the 1939 Register there's a right-hand page in the book of employee records, but this time we can see what it says:

This suggests that whilst Leslie Foskett was in a 'reserved occupation' at the start of the war, in 1942 he became liable to being called-up for military service - though he seems to have avoided it, judging from the notes. But not everyone working for the company was as fortunate - Victor George Childs was called up in July 1943:

You can see his entry in the 1939 Register below - note that he was working as an assembler of water heaters in September 1939:

Of course, The Preston Sheet Metal Co. didn't only employ men - there was a war on, and everyone had a part to play, including Edna May Booth, who worked in the Bomb Doors department:

As you can see from her identity card number she wasn't a local - in September 1939 she'd been living with her family in Bedwellty, Monmouthshire:

But coming up to London did have its benefits - in 1946 Edna married Frank H Lowe. Edna died in 1971, just as they would have been celebrating their Silver Wedding.

Without ordering their marriage certificate I can't be sure who her husband was, but I'd like to think that this was him, living in Edmonton, Middlesex (north east London):

This is a rare example of a serving soldier recorded in the 1939 Register - I imagine he was home on leave. Frank Hector Lowe junior lived until 2003, and died in Hackney registration district, not far from where he was living in 1939 or from where Edna died in 1971.

Tip: you will find a list of reserved occupations on Guy Etchells' website here.

Decoding area codes from the 1939 Register

In the first part of Insights in the 1939 Register I linked to a table of area codes ordered by place name (you'll find it here). This is very handy if you know where somebody was living, but what if you have the number of their identity card and want to find out where they were in September 1939?

You could search for the first three letters (remember, the quickest way to search for text on a web page is to press Ctrl-F) but this won't work much of the time - because the codes listed in the table are usually the first in a sequence. For example, the codes allocated for Willesden start with BXA but run all the way through to BXZ (it's possible that some of the codes weren't used).

Fortunately one of the world's leading experts on the 1939 Register, Audrey Collins at the National Archives, has created a spreadsheet showing the codes in alphabetical order, making it really easy to determine - for example - that Edna May Booth, whose identity card was numbered XOFB/147/5 came from Bedwellty in Wales.

I've turned the spreadsheet into a web page that you'll find here - I hope you find it useful.

Tip: all codes beginning with X or Z were allocated to areas in Wales, codes beginning with S were allocated to Scotland, codes beginning U were allocated to Northern Ireland, and codes beginning HZ to the Isle of Man. Codes beginning with Y are only found on replacement cards issued when the original is lost or damaged.

Surviving records from the 1915 Register

Although the registers created during the Great War were destroyed in 1921, 2409 forms for individuals aged between 15 and 64 from the town of Cirencester and the surrounding villages were found a few years ago by volunteers who were cataloguing the records of a local solicitor.

The information on those forms has been transcribed by LostCousins member David Drinkwater, and the spreadsheet can be downloaded from the Gloucestershire Archives by following this link.

Did you miss WDYTYA Live? Speakers handouts now available

Not all of us could make it to Birmingham for the biggest event of the year - and even those who did attend may not have been able to hear all the presentations they would have wanted to.

So I was delighted to learn that many of the speakers have uploaded notes to the Society of Genealogists website - you'll find them here. On the same page you'll also find notes for presentations given in earlier years - all the way back to 2014, in fact.

Tip: don't miss Janet Few's notes for 'The Ones That Got Away: Tracing Elusive Ancestors'.

"Evening all": George Dixson's pension records revealed NEW

Nobody of my generation who grew up in Britain can fail to remember PC George Dixon, whose character - played by Jack Warner - was killed off by Dirk Bogarde in The Blue Lamp, only to be resurrected for the TV series Dixon of Dock Green, which ran for 432 episodes between 1955 and 1976.

PC George Dixon wasn't a real policeman, but one of the tens of thousands of London policemen whose pension details are included in Ancestry's new record set is PC George Dixson, who had made it to Superintendent by the time he retired in 1913 on a pension of £300 per annum (a useful income in those days). You can search for your own relatives if you follow the link below:

Metropolitan Police Pension Registers, 1852-1932

There's quite a lot of information on the forms - and most of it on the reverse, so make sure you look at both sides.

Note: another entry is for Frederick George Abberline, who married my 1st cousin 4 times removed Emma Beament. He retired in 1892 on a pension of £206 13s 4d, having ended up as a Chief Inspector, but what the pension record doesn't tell you is that his most famous case was that of Jack the Ripper.

Bedfordshire Electoral Registers 1832-1986 NEW

Also new this month at Ancestry are electoral registers for Bedfordshire, covering the period 1832-1986. I've already found several of my relatives recorded, some of them as recently as 1986.

Bedfordshire, England, Electoral Registers, 1832-1986

Wiltshire parish records online

At the end of last month I exclusively revealed Ancestry's plans to publish the parish registers for Wiltshire this summer, and it seems to have spurred Findmypast into releasing their own Wiltshire collection, which comprises transcriptions of nearly 5 million parish records of baptisms, banns, marriages and burials dating back to 1538 (and possibly earlier). Together they are the largest online collection of Wiltshire records - though only, I would assume, until Ancestry launch their own collection.

These links will take you direct to the relevant search pages:

Wiltshire Baptisms Index 1530-1917

Wiltshire Banns Index 1538-1933

Wiltshire Marriages Index 1538-1933

Wiltshire Burials Index 1538-1990

Other Wiltshire resources at Findmypast include:

Wiltshire Quarter Session Calendars 1728-1890

Wiltshire Removal Orders 1670-1890

Tip: don't assume that once the parish registers are online at Ancestry you'll have no further need for Findmypast's transcriptions - early parish records are notoriously difficult to interpret, so having a second index to search will be incredibly useful.

6 counties in 6 months - Findmypast's pledge

At Who Do You Think You Are? Live last week Findmypast revealed that Wiltshire would be the first of 6 counties whose parish records will be arriving on their site in the next 6 months, the others being Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Nottinghamshire, Somerset and Warwickshire.

Findmypast claim that they already have more parish records for England & Wales than any other site, and whilst I haven't attempted to verify this myself, they undoubtedly have an enormous collection.

Living DNA: interesting and impressive results

I thought you might be interested to see how Living DNA have interpreted my autosomal DNA results:

In broad terms these estimates tie in pretty well with what I know about my tree so far - I've certainly got more ancestors from East Anglia and South-East England than anywhere else, and whilst I don't know of any connections to Yorkshire, I can't ignore the fact that Beaumont, my grandmother's maiden name, is more common in Yorkshire than anywhere else.

I'm also conscious of the fact that the ancestors I've found living in London in the late 18th and early 19th centuries could have come from anywhere; few Londoners really are Londoners. There's no Scottish or Irish ancestry, which ties in with what I do know - and whilst I haven't traced any ancestors to Wales yet, I do have a great-great-great grandmother who was born in Bristol (allegedly I can't find her baptism).

Living DNA haven't picked up on the fact that I have some German ancestry (about 5-6%), but I can imagine that against a background of long-term immigration by Angles and Saxons it's difficult to spot DNA from more recent German immigrants.

Both Ancestry and Family Tree DNA are in the process of upgrading their analyses, but Living DNA are still streets ahead for those of us with mainly British ancestry. Look out for my next newsletter, because with Easter approaching there are sure to be some attractive offers on DNA tests!

GEDmatch website hit by server problems

You may have noticed problems with GEDmatch last week - this was the result of server problems that have now been circumvented.

Family Tree Maker 2017 release delayed

The release of Family Tree Maker 2017 has been delayed while Software MacKiev and Ancestry work together to resolve potential problems with FamilySync, the replacement for TreeSync, which was discontinued at the end of March.

Some users of FTM have been annoyed by the delays - but, hey, what's a couple of weeks in the context of a family tree that goes back hundreds of years? As someone who founded his first software publishing company almost 40 years ago I'm glad that MacKiev are behaving responsibly by holding back the release until any possible issues have been resolved.

Incidentally, from what I can gather they're not so much fixing bugs, but trying to make the sync more efficient so that when tens of thousands of FTM users try to sync their trees simultaneously the Ancestry site doesn't get so overwhelmed that it grinds to a halt - because that would affect everyone, not just those who use FTM. In their 9th April update they commented that the new sync is currently over 8 times faster for large trees than TreeSync, which has to be good news.

You can follow their progress here.

Some like it Hotmail

A lot of people use Hotmail addresses even though they are unreliable. That's right - sometimes emails sent to you will simply disappear into a black hole, and because neither you nor the sender will be informed you could already be one of those affected.

Fortunately there is a way to increase the chance of important emails getting through (thanks to LostCousins member Chris for drafting these simple instructions):

When you are expecting an email from someone which never arrives (eg a password reminder from Lost Cousins), and having checked it is not in the Junk Email box:

(1) Click on the cog icon (right-hand side of toolbar at top)

(2) Click 'Options'

(3) Scroll down to 'Safe Senders' in Junk Email section and click

(4) Type in the email address from which you are expecting the email and save it

Clearly you wouldn't be reading this now if you hadn't received my email telling you about this newsletter. But the most important emails from LostCousins are the ones automatically generated by the LostCousins system, which includes not just emails with password reminders, but also messages from new cousins who have found you through the site - and you certainly wouldn't want to miss them!

Those emails are sent from a different email address - and, of course, you won't necessarily be expecting them. So I strongly recommend that you follow Chris's advice and tell Hotmail that you want to receive emails from the address:

Finally, check that you can receive messages from that address by requesting a password reminder using this link. When the email arrives log-in to your account and go to the My Details page to ensure that you have provided me with alternate means of contacting you (and if so, that this information is up to date). It's best if you can provide both a secondary email address (with a different email provider) and a postal address.

Note: your contact details aren't visible to other members - unless you agree to exchange email addresses with them they will only be able to contact you by sending a message via their My Cousins page, and they will never be given your postal address. Even I will only use your postal address as a last resort since sending letters through the mail is slow, expensive, and time-consuming (apart from the time it takes me to write the letter it's a 2½ mile roundtrip to my nearest postbox).

The etiquette of exchanging email addresses

When you're connected with another member through your My Cousins page, and they've agreed to correspond, you'll have the option of exchanging email addresses with them. That's right, exchanging - in other words, you'll each receive the other's email address at the same time.

Of course, you probably won't want to exchange email addresses immediately - as with dating, it makes sense to get to know the other person first - but when you decide the time is right DON'T put your email address in a message to your relative, because this could put you in a situation where they know your email address but you don't know theirs.

You might think that's not a problem - after all, you'll find out their email address when they write to you - but life is rarely that simple. For a start, an incoming email from someone whose email address isn't in your address book could well end up in your spam folder - and, even worse, it might disappear into one of those black holes that I was talking about in the previous article (Hotmail aren't the only culprits).

Just imagine what it will do to the relationship with your new cousin if you don't receive their email…. the chances are you'll each start to think that the other person isn't really interested in corresponding, you because you've heard nothing despite handing over your email address, they because they've taken the time to write to you, but haven't even had an acknowledgment.

Provided you exchange email addresses via your My Cousins page you can sidestep all of these potential problems, and avoid starting off on the wrong foot. And there's another benefit - the email addresses shown on the My Cousins page are automatically updated when a member changes their email address. This means it makes sense to connect with, and exchange email addresses with, someone you've been matched with at LostCousins even if you've corresponded with them before at another site.

Tip: for the same reason it also makes sense to invite cousins you've found elsewhere to join LostCousins - and for them, there's the bonus of finding other cousins once they complete their My Ancestors page. Of course, you can help them by using the Refer a Relative option on your My Referrals page - this allows you to copy from your account to theirs the details of the relatives you share, avoiding duplication of effort and giving them a head start in the search for new cousins.

Review: The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick-Maker: The story of Britain through its census

If you're struggling to find your ancestors in the census, this isn't the book to buy - because it's not a "how to" book but a history of the census in Britain, as well as a history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire as seen through the prism of the census. But considering how important the surviving censuses are to family historians - wouldn't you like to know how it got started?

The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick-Maker: The story of Britain through its census, since 1801 by [Hutchinson, Roger] John Rickman features prominently, particularly in the first half of the book - it was his essay "Thoughts on the Utility and Facility of Ascertaining the Population of England" that led to the first, modest, census in 1801 and he was in charge of the first 4 censuses. But the first census that listed everyone by name was, as every family historian knows, taken in 1841 - and John Rickman had died the previous year, 11 days short of his 69th birthday. Fortunately there were men who could build on the foundations Rickman had laid: these included Thomas Henry Lister, the first Registrar General, George Graham, his successor, and William Farr, a doctor turned statistician who was the real driving force.

These days we purport to know how many people there are in the world (see, for example, the real-time counter at the US Census Bureau website) but until 1801 nobody had a clue how many people lived in Great Britain, or whether the population was rising or falling (parish registers in London recorded more deaths than baptisms, but it was a city that was growing fast as a result of migration).

Why did the Census Act 1800 pass, when other attempts had failed? Partly because those who thought that the population was rising were disconcerted by the publication in 1798 of Malthus's essay on population growth, and partly because those who thought that the population was static or falling were worried about the war with France (a country which, everyone agreed, had a much larger population).

But whilst Roger Hutchinson, the author of this magisterial work, shows great insight and brings together a wide range of interesting facts, I was somewhat horrified by his apparent lack of knowledge of the censuses themselves. For example, he writes of Queen Victoria:

"The national census of 1861 estimated Victoria's birth year as 1820. The summary of the 1841 census, taken four years after she ascended to the throne, stated that Victoria had been born 'abt 1821'. She had in fact been born in Kensington Palace on 24 May 1819. If the national census could consistently get wrong the personal details of the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland and the future Empress of India, what hope had anyone else?"

As everyone reading this newsletter well knows, none of the censuses asked for respondents to provide their year of birth - they only asked for ages, and in 1841 these were to be rounded down to the nearest multiple of 5, other than children under 15 (only when the 1939 National Register was compiled were respondents asked for dates of birth rather than ages). The only place I can find Victoria's year of birth shown as 'abt 1821' is in Ancestry's transcription - and, as any family historian knows, transcriptions are merely finding guides. Did Hutchinson not look at the handwritten census schedule, or read the instructions to enumerators?

The author also plays fast and loose with dates. In the very first chapter he talks about John Rickman leaving Oxford after 4 years, having gone up in 1788 - then describes him as returning to:

"…a society at war and in convulsion. The French Revolution of 1789 inspired men and women, particularly the young, throughout the rest of Europe to espouse such radical beliefs as… had provoked Robert Southey to write his famous anti-war poem 'After Blenheim'…."

However Southey's poem was not, according to the sources I've checked, written until 1796 - so 'had provoked' should really read 'would provoke'. A small point, perhaps, but in the light of the fact that by 1820 Southey was describing Blenheim as the "greatest victory" timing is not unimportant.

Hutchinson also accepts, apparently without question, the story of Mary Jonas and her 33 children. As I explained in January, there's good reason to think that Mrs Jonas exaggerated the numbers in order to win a magazine competition - there's certainly no hard evidence for her arduous feat.

But whilst some of the many facts that the author musters are questionable didn't detract from my enjoyment of the book - and to be fair, I probably make just as many errors myself in these newsletters. All 3 of the reviews on Amazon give it 5 stars and the reviews that I've seen in other publications have also been very positive - indeed it was a review in The Oldie that first attracted me to the book. I bought the Kindle version as I knew I would be travelling, but it's also available as a hardback (the paperback isn't due out until December).

Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca The Book Depository

Review: Dying Games

The title of Steve Robinson's latest novel featuring genealogist Jefferson Tayte doesn't immediately conjure up visions of archives and record offices - and whilst they certainly feature in the book, I couldn't help thinking back to my Amazon review of the first book in the series, when I wrote "Steve Robinson probably won't win any literary prizes, but when it comes to writing books that you simply can't put down, in my estimation he's right up there with Ian Fleming."

JT is very unlike JB, but somehow he manages to get involved in equally hazardous situations - and like 007 he always manages to escape, his trademark tan suit just a little more crumpled than before. But does Steve Robinson write genealogical mysteries, or thrillers that just happen to feature a genealogist? I'd say they're somewhere in between.

When previewing Dying Games in the last newsletter I wrote that "from my reading of the author's description, [it] sounds like Jefferson Tayte meets CSI", and that turned out to be spot on, because there's a serial killer on the loose who seems to be taunting our hero by leaving cryptic clues that relate to past cases. Indeed, had Steve Robinson decided to give the book a sub-title then "this time it's personal", the tag line of the fourth Jaws movie, would have done very well.

Called in by the FBI, JT soon realises that if he can crack the puzzles, then maybe he can crack the case - and put an end to horrific killings - but inevitably it turns about to be a bit more complicated than that. A lot more complicated, in fact, because the killer decides on the rules of the game.

Reading this book is unlikely to make you a better family historian, but I suspect that - like me - once you've started reading you'll be hooked. And whilst the crime scene descriptions are pretty gruesome, nobody who has watched CSI will be shocked.

There's just one slight genealogical slip that I noticed - Jefferson Tayte identifies one of the clues as a "birth registration number". However, the format of the reference suggests that it's actually the number of a birth certificate, which is not the same thing. Birth, marriage, and death certificates are rather like banknotes - each one has a different number as a safeguard against theft and forgery - but the number doesn't relate to the register entry. (On the other hand I'm sure that the GRO could, given the opportunity, have identified the register entry from the certificate number, so the integrity of the storyline isn't impaired.)

Dying Games will be released on 4th May, but you can support LostCousins by pre-ordering it using the links below. I read the Kindle version, but it will also be available as a paperback.

Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca

What am I reading?

I'm just coming to the end of Tracing Your Army Ancestors by Simon Fowler which I'll be reviewing it in the next issue of this newsletter (I had hoped to finish it in time for this one, but when the new Jefferson Tayte novel arrived in my inbox I'm afraid I succumbed to temptation).

However I can tell you now that I am very impressed by Tracing Your Army Ancestors - it's an amazingly detailed work, so if you want to order it now, before the rush please use one of the following links (I haven't listed Amazon's North American sites as it won't be released over there until next month):

Ancestry.co.uk The Book Depository

After that I'll be going back in time to re-read the third book in the Jefferson Tayte series, The Last Queen of England, since I've just realised that I didn't publish a full review when it was released 3 years ago.

Peter's Tips

Do you stay with the same broadband provider? A recent article on the BBC News site suggests that loyal customers are being penalised.

Many people choose to use an email address linked to their provider, but that might not be such a good idea - 15% of the British readers of this newsletter were recently forced to change their address when EE decided not to provide email any more (you can see my January article here).

But using your ISP's email address also helps to tie you to them - after all, it's far harder to switch broadband providers if doing so means having to tell everyone that you've changed your email address. I saved over £250 by switching from BT to Sky last year - that's enough to pay for subscriptions to both Findmypast and Ancestry - but because I never used my BT email address I didn't have to change anything (other than the settings in my email program).

Stop Press

Wednesday: I've just heard that Ancestry.co.uk will be offering FREE access to their British and Commonwealth records for the entire Easter weekend, from Friday 14th April until midnight on Monday 17th. To take advantage of this offer or see what records are included please follow this link.

I hope you enjoyed this edition - I'll be in touch again very soon!

Description: Description: peter_signature

Peter Calver

Founder, LostCousins

Please do NOT copy or republish any part of this newsletter without permission - which is only granted in the most exceptional circumstances. However, you MAY link to this newsletter or any article in it without asking for permission - though why not invite other family historians to join LostCousins instead, since standard membership (which includes the newsletter), is FREE

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