Newsletter
- 25th November 2016
Living
DNA offers new high resolution test for Britons
Ancestry
DNA's Black Friday Sale ENDS MONDAY
Could the
dodo make a comeback?
High
demand for PDFs causes delays at GRO
Unusual
death register entries - cause of death
Two
unusual birth certificates
Have
pages been stolen from the BMD registers?
Warning:
twins might not be born on the same day
Glad
tidings of great joy: finding new cousins for Christmas
Army
pensioner records at Ancestry/Fold3
Did
your ancestors go to school?
20th
century research with Else Churchill
Peter's
Tips - Black Friday Special
The LostCousins newsletter is usually
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Living DNA offers new
high resolution test for Britons
Somerset isn't somewhere that I'd
normally associate with high-technology businesses, but Living DNA - based in Frome - are planning
to shake up the DNA testing market by adding a unique slant. Other companies offer
ethnicity estimates that are very broad brush - for example, Family Tree DNA
tell me that I'm 100% European, with 59% from Western & Central Europe and
41% from Scandinavia, none of which is surprising given the Norman invasion and
Viking incursions. But it doesn't tell me whether I have ancestors from
Yorkshire, or Scotland.
However the new kid on the block, Living DNA, will make use
of the DNA profiles collected during the ground-breaking People of the British
Isles project, which I wrote about in
April 2015, in order to provide much higher resolution results. Living DNA have
reanalysed the data to create 21 areas of Britain, so that there really is a
chance of finding out something new about where your ancestors came from.
Of course, knowing that you have
ancestors from a particular region doesn't tell you who they were - but it's a
step in the right direction. Living DNA are using a brand new chip from
Illumina, the company that makes the chips that are used for autosomal DNA
testing by other major companies - and they've aimed for backwards
compatibility, so that if you test with Living DNA you'll be able to match with
cousins who tested with one of the other companies at a site like GEDmatch
(although so far as I know the software to do this hasn't been written yet).
At £120 including shipping the Living
DNA test is more expensive than most other autosomal tests, but I'm going to
try it out - since I have several ancestors who arrived in London in the late
18th and early 19th centuries from I know not where. After all these years of fruitless
searching some extra clues would be really handy! You can find out more (and
support LostCousins) when you follow this link.
Ancestry DNA's Black
Friday Sale
Ancestry
DNA are offering their lowest ever price in the UK until midnight on Monday!
At £49 (plus £20 shipping for the first kit, £10 for subsequent kits in the
same order) it's £30 cheaper than their usual price, and less than half what
they were charging for the test at the start of the year.
There are three advantages in testing
with Ancestry:
·
they have the
biggest database, and are therefore capable of producing the most matches;
·
they use an
algorithm to 'phase' the results, reducing the risk of false matches;
·
they can
sometimes identify links in trees (they don't need to be public trees)
However, it's not all good news - even
at this low price you're paying more than you would during the Family Tree DNA
offer (which is still running - see this article in
my last newsletter), and to make full use of your results you must have an
Ancestry subscription (whereas Family Tree DNA and Living DNA don't charge a
subscription). Another limitation that I find frustrating is the lack of
information about the matches - all they'll reveal is the total length of the
matching segments, and how many matching segments there are - but as a beginner
that might not worry you as much as it does me.
Fortunately you can always download your
results from Ancestry, then upload them to GEDmatch, where there are many free
tools you can use - and it's also an opportunity to match with people who
tested with a different company. Downloading your results from Ancestry
doesn't, of course, take them away from Ancestry - you can continue to make
matches there as new people test (and as Ancestry refine their algorithms).
GEDmatch displays the email addresses of your matches so you can often tell
which country they're in - information that might help you decide which matches
to follow up as a matter of priority - but the flipside of this is that they'll
see your email address (so some people create a new address that forwards to
their main email address).
Please use this
link so that you can support LostCousins when taking advantage of this offer (Tip: if you're already
logged in to Ancestry log out, then click the link again).
This week New Scientist reported research which found that blood plasma from
young people could rejuvenate old mice, not only boosting their physical
activity, but also their memory and mental skills (you can read more about it here).
But what I want to know is ,when I am going to get some of this new blood - any
willing donors out there?
Could the dodo make a
comeback?
This week a 95% complete dodo skeleton
was auctioned for £280,000 - but is there any chance that the dodo could be
resurrected using DNA? Jurassic Park was unrealistic, as DNA couldn't have
survived for millions of years - but perhaps one day it will be possible to
recover sufficient dodo DNA to bring back this extinct bird. And if this does
happen, the phrase "dead as a dodo" could have a whole new meaning!
In New Zealand the kakapo is close to
extinction - at one point the surviving population of this flightless bird had
dwindled to just 51, although numbers have now recovered to 123 adults. A
project run by Bruce Robertson of Otago University is sequencing the DNA of
every living kakapo - and if funds permit they'll also include dead specimens
in museums (you can read more in this article
from The Economist). The results will
enable the team to encourage male-female pairings that maintain genetic
diversity and eliminate genetic diseases - will the same approach one day be
necessary to ensure the survival of the human race, I wonder?
High demand for PDFs causes
delays at GRO
Although the first orders for PDF copies
of birth and death register entries arrived on, or ahead of schedule - in part
thanks to dedicated GRO staff working over the weekend of 12th-13th November - a
backlog subsequently built up which resulted in estimated delivery dates being
put back by as much as 10 days. A PDF I ordered on 11th November was due for
delivery on Friday 18th, but didn't arrive until the morning of Sunday 20th, so
it seems that some of the staff have once again given up their weekend.
Some may criticise the GRO for not being
prepared for the avalanche of orders, but it wouldn't be fair - remember this is
a trial, intended not just to assess demand for the services, but also
to test out the systems in a real-world environment.
Unusual death
register entries - cause of death
The GRO's 2010 guidance for
doctors completing medical certificates warns against naming 'old age' as the
cause of death except in specific and very limited circumstances (see section
5.3 of the guide), and emphasises that 'natural causes' alone should never be
specified. But it was not always thus - you might come across a 19th century
which ascribes the death to 'visitation
of God', as in the register entry below, which LostCousins Michael sent me this
week:
In the effect the coroner was saying "I
haven't got a clue, but there was no foul play and it definitely wasn't
suicide". But at least that's more information than this death register
entry for a 7 year-old girl sent to me by Jill:
I'd never previously seen death
certificate with no cause shown, so I suggested that Jill contact the local
registrar, to see whether the cause of death was shown in their register
(which, of course, is the primary source - the GRO register entries are
transcribed copies of the local entries). But the reply from the local district
was unambiguous:
"I have checked the Register, (K/Bewdley 2 entry 178) we hold here at Worcestershire and
confirm that no cause of death was recorded.
Having looked at other entries in this Register there are others who
also do not have a cause of death."
I was very surprised at this, so I
contacted a LostCousins member who used to hold a senior position in the
Registration Service, who was amazed, telling me that "In my early days in
registration I was involved in the production of copy certificates for the
whole period 1st July 1837 to date. I have never seen an entry where the
cause of death was blank."
Have pages been stolen
from the BMD registers?
The new online indexes of historic
births and deaths for England & Wales have not only proven their worth to
family historians, they've also attracted the attention of those running
One-Name Studies. A key starting point for anyone running a surname study
registered with the Guild of One-Name Studies is an analysis of all the births,
marriages, and deaths for that surname in the GRO indexes - and several members
have reported to me that in compiling a list using the new indexes they have
identified a number of omissions. Some may be the result of hard to read
handwriting being interpreted differently by different transcribers - remember
that whilst the GRO indexes were created just after the end of each quarter,
the new indexes were created from a transcription of the GRO registers that
were scanned about a decade ago as part of the DoVE
project.
But whilst transcription errors are
inevitable, there really shouldn't be any omissions - it's not difficult to
devise a system that prevents entries being omitted altogether. However, until
we're able to search the new indexes more flexibly - at the moment all searches
must include a surname, and no wild cards are allowed - it will be difficult to
be certain that a particular entry has been omitted. Nevertheless, when every
entry on a page appears to be missing it's hard to avoid the conclusion that
they’ve been omitted altogether.
When I was sent an example this week of
an apparently missing page I immediately identified three possibilities. Least
worrying of all is the possibility that the page was scanned, but for some
reason it wasn't transcribed (or if it was, the transcription didn't find its
way into the database from which the index was drawn. Slightly more worrying is
the possibility that the page was not scanned, and as a result never
transcribed.
But of most concern to me was the
possibility that the page is actually missing from the GRO's registers. Until
around 1898 the Registrar General allowed members of the public to search the
registers in person - is it possible that some pages might have been stolen or
destroyed? It is certainly believed that some pages from the censuses went
missing during the time that public access to them was allowed, and I've
personally seen a spoof census entry that was added at some point in the 20th
century.
If, like me, you’re fascinated by the
minutiae of civil registration you might like to look through the instructions
issued to clergy in England & Wales by the General Register Office in 2015
- you'll find the PDF file here.
Covering not just marriages, but matters related to baptism and burial, it will
not only solve a few mysteries, but answer questions that you've never
previously thought to ask. The FAQS at the end include topics such as "What
do I do if I cannot get into my safe to get my registers?", and "Do I
still need to check the details of someone known to me?", whilst the
flowchart in Appendix B covers a difficult but topical subject, "How to
establish British Nationality".
Warning: twins might not
be born on the same day
During the beta-testing of the new
online indexes I identified two children who had been born to my
great-grandfather and his second wife (my great-great aunt) in the same quarter
of 1898, but who died the same year. At that time the PDF trial hadn't begun - the enabling legislation
didn't come into force until 7th
November - so I ordered the birth certificate for Alfred, one of the twins:
As you can see, the certificate gives
the date of Alfred's birth, but not the time - which is normally shown on the
birth certificates of twins in order to document which is the elder. What could
explain the omission of the time? Clearly they must have been born on different
days, as I discovered last Sunday when a PDF copy of the birth register entry
for Ellen arrived:
In this case the twins were born on
consecutive days in the same month, but there are cases of twins born in
different months or different years. But twins can be born weeks apart - this story
tells how two Irish twins were born 87 days apart in 2012.
Even more confusing, I suspect, for the
family historians of the future will be the twins who were born in different
countries - you can read about it here.
And whilst the time of birth is
generally only shown on birth certificates for England & Wales in the event
of a multiple birth, that isn't the case in Scotland, where the time of birth
is always shown. For more information about Scottish birth certificates see
this page
at the National Records of Scotland website. But it's not only in Scotland that
you might find the time of birth shown on a certificate…..
Two unusual birth
certificates
During the beta-testing of the new GRO
indexes I found what I believe to be the 1843 birth of my great-great uncle
Henry Till, also known as Henry Pilkington - I ordered the certificate (because
at the time the PDF trial was some way away, and i
thought you might like to see how little information it gives compared to the
one above (no child's name, and no father's name or occupation).
Notice that the birth was registered
almost exactly 42 days after the birth - I suspect that Jane, my great-great
grandmother, was hoping that the father - her future husband - would
acknowledge paternity. However David Pilkington's first wife, Sarah Baldwin, was still alive at this time,
and he no doubt felt it unwise to publicly acknowledge that he was the father.
His name is nevertheless shown in the baptism register - but the baptism didn't
take place until 4 years later, by which time David and Jane were married. It
was a strange match - he was 44 years older than Jane, and his daughter by his
first wife was old enough to be Jane's mother. Perhaps it was a shotgun
wedding, but in reverse - David Pilkington was a gunsmith!
Although Henry was a beneficiary in
David Pilkington's will, he didn't acknowledge him as his son in the will = he
was referred to as his wife's son.
The next birth certificate looks quite
normal, doesn't it?
You've probably guessed that the parents
weren't actually married - otherwise why pick this certificate out at all? But
that's not all - the parents weren't Henry Stevens and Jane Rushbrook,
as shown on the certificate, in reality they were Henry Rushbrook
and Jane Stevens! Have you ever come
across a certificate as misleading as this?
Glad tidings of great
joy: finding new cousins for Christmas
We family historians spend much of our
time investigating long-dead ancestors, so wouldn't it be great to find some
new living cousins - especially cousins who are as interested in family history
as we are?
I discovered recently that many regular
readers have forgotten that LostCousins isn't just a newsletter - there's a
website where you can connect with living cousins around the world (just click
on the LostCousins logo at the top of any newsletter to be taken to the home
page). Everyone who receives an email telling them about these newsletters is already
a member of LostCousins - the emails only go out to members - so if you haven't
logged-in recently you're definitely missing out.
If you have British or mostly British
ancestry then a simple calculation shows that over 200 fellow LostCousins members
are your 6th cousins (or closer). You might think a 6th cousin sounds distant
but, believe me, when you get back 7 generations and you've got 128 ancestral
lines to investigate, you'll need all the help you can get, especially if
you're using DNA to supplement traditional sources of information.
About one-third of you reading this have
yet to enter any data on your My
Ancestors page - the page that acts as a permanent search form, and yet
it's so easy (see the Getting Started
guide on the Help
& Advice page for an illustrated step-by-step tutorial).
When you enter a deceased relative on your My
Ancestors page you can search for living cousins by clicking the Search button - and you can repeat the
search as often as you wish (new members join LostCousins every day). Of
course, the more relatives you enter on your My Ancestors page the more cousins you're likely to find - ideally
you would want to enter all the relatives you can find on the 1881 Censuses, as
they're the ones your cousins are most likely to have used. Almost everyone
reading this could enter more relatives from 1881 - especially now that the
GRO's new online indexes are revealing new twigs on our family tree.
Christmas is a special holiday - it's a
time for family to come together, but it's also a time when we remember those
who can no longer be with us. Wouldn't it wonderful to find some new cousins in
time for Christmas?
Everyone has 'brick walls' in their
family tree - even the Queen! But what is a 'brick wall'? A typical definition
is "something that prevents you from doing something", and since what
most modern family historians aim to do is research back as far as they can on
every line in their tree, a 'brick wall' is something that prevents us going
back another generation. In other words, it's a direct ancestor whose birth or
baptism we can't find - possibly because we don't know what name we should be
looking for.
It might surprise you to learn that the
more experienced and successful you are as a family historian, the more 'brick
walls' you'll have. Why? Because every time you knock down a 'brick wall' there
are at least two more hidden behind it! There are many LostCousins members who
have been researching longer than I have, but even I had 75 'brick walls' in my
tree when I last counted - there's no way I could research all of those lines
without the help of my cousins.
A recent enquiry from a LostCousins
member prompted me to put together this piece of advice…..
I don't add someone
to my tree unless I'm convinced that they're a relative of mine.
Citations don't prove
anything but they do remind you why you thought someone was a relative of
yours, and they allow others you might share the tree with to understand your
logic. So they're a necessary but not sufficient condition.
Similarly, finding
other trees online that show the same information doesn't prove anything - even
if it has multiple citations. Many mistakes are made simply because the wrong
information is more accessible than the right information, so if one person
makes the mistake, the chances are others will too.
My family tree
program allows me to record people and families who have a possible or probable
connection to my tree without actually connecting them. There are lots of
families whose details I recorded over a decade ago, but have yet to be able to
connect to my tree. Having them present, but not connected, is extremely
useful; one day I may be able to connect them - perhaps I never will - but
being able to record information about them as I find it is very useful.
The program I use
also allows me to connect someone who I am certain is an ancestor of mine, but
where no proof exists (perhaps because a page is missing from the baptism
register), with a different-coloured line, to remind me that I need
confirmation from another source, possibly DNA.
If the family tree
program you use doesn't allow you to do both of these things (albeit in a
slightly-different way) you might want to consider changing it for one that
does.
Never use an online
tree as your main tree, and never post information online unless you are
absolutely certain it is correct. Ideally never post a public tree online.
When it comes to adding
relatives to your My Ancestors page at the LostCousins site the situation is a
little more relaxed. There are times when it simply isn't possible to identify
the right person on the census, especially someone who has recently left home
and is working as a servant, so I introduced the 'possible relative'
relationship. It's not intended as a replacement for research - it's designed
for those situations where having tried everything you can't find the answer.
I hope this helps,
and encourages you to complete your My Ancestors page so that I can start
connecting you with the many other members who are your 'lost cousins'. Much as
I like to be able to help and advise members, I can't
possibly do as good a job as someone who shares your ancestors and understands
the challenges you're faced with.
Hope this helps,
Peter
Note:
the main family tree program I use is Genopro, but whilst
it does what I want it's not necessarily the best for you; Family Historian is a very powerful program
(and it was written here in Britain) - if I was starting from scratch it's the
one I'd go for. Unfortunately I can't advise members on family tree programs,
not even the two I've mentioned, because it's a very personal choice - what
works for me may not work for you - but if a family tree program is worth
buying they'll almost certainly offer a free trial version.
Army pensioner records
at Ancestry/Fold3
Earlier this month added two key sets of
British army records which are held by the National Archives - but whilst you
can search them at Ancestry, the images are only available at Fold3,
Ancestry's partner website:
Royal
Hospital Chelsea Pensioner Admissions and Discharges, 1715-1925
Royal
Hospital Chelsea Pensioner Soldier Service Records, 1760-1920
These records are held by TNA in WO116
and WO97 respectively. The latter can also be found at Findmypast, but as far as I am aware WO116
has not been online previously. You can currently get a 12 month subscription
to Fold3
for $39.95 (about £33), or else you can take advantage of a 7-day free trial.
If you do decide to subscribe, please use this link
- it won't cost you any more, but you'll be supporting LostCousins.
Did your ancestors go to
school?
Earlier this year Andrew Chapman,
executive editor of Your Family History
wrote an article in which he examined our ancestors' education - and, more to
the point, how many of them actually had one. I thought it might be useful to
draw your attention to some of the key findings since with release of the new
online indexes from the GRO we're seeing more and more early birth and death
register entries demonstrating that many of our ancestors were unable to sign
their own names.
In England & Wales state support for
education began as late as 1833 (Scotland was much quicker off the mark), and
until then it was left to philanthropists to cater for the education of the
masses through charity and 'ragged' schools. The Sunday School movement
had started in Gloucester in 1780, allowing children to get some basic
education even though they were working 6 days a week - by the time the
government started to get involved about 25% of children were attending Sunday
Schools.
In 1870 the Elementary Education Act set
up school boards to provide for the education of children aged 5 to 13, but it
wasn't until 1880 that attendance became compulsory, and even then only up to
the age of 10 (in industrial areas children were an important source of cheap
labour for factories, and a source of income for their hard-pressed families).
You can find out more about education in England at this website run by
Derek Gillard.
The newly-published Oxford
Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland is probably
the best of its kind, but at £400, this multi-volume work (it extends to over
3000 pages) is clearly aimed at reference libraries. Divining the origin of a
surname isn't easy, so it's perhaps not surprising that works of this type tend
to come in for criticism from those who have done a lot of research into a
particular surname, or whose work has focused on a certain part of the country
(see for example, this article
from October 2014).
Of course, you could always buy the
Kindle version for a mere £260…. but seriously, why not download the free sample - you never know
what you might learn?
20th century research with
Else Churchill
On the afternoon of Wednesday 30th
November Else Churchill, the genealogist at the Society of Genealogists, will
be talking about 20th century records and sources - including, but by no means
restricted to, the 1939 Register. There were only 25 places left when I checked
just now - so if you are interested, and are able to get to London, book now!
You'll find more details on the SoG website here.
In recent newsletters we've talked a lot
about errors in records, especially historic BMD records, so whilst the example
I spotted online this week isn't anything to do with family history, it just
goes to show that even smart, intelligent people can get it wrong. Don't worry
if you’re not technical - the error in the instructional video is so blatant
that anyone who knows how to tell the time could spot it!
First of all let me put it into context:
in our new kitchen - now two-thirds complete - we're going to have the luxury
of a gas hob. For those of you who are on mains gas it might not sound like
much of a luxury, but for me it will be a real treat! Naturally we're going to
have to use bottled gas (LPG), and whilst the hob is being fitted by a
fully-qualified engineer, I'm the one that will have to change the bottle when
it runs out - so being ultra-cautious I decided to watch this 90 second Calor
Gas video which shows how to connect the regulator to the gas bottle.
The first time I watched it I couldn't
believe what I was seeing and hearing - and nor will you. It's the first 30
seconds which so amazed me - but if you keep watching until the end there's a
final sting in the tail. I don't know how many people have watched this video
at the Calor Gas site, but it's had over 26 thousand
views at YouTube - and when I contacted Calor to
point out their error I got fobbed off. I don't suppose anyone is going to blow
themselves up as a result of this particular mistake, but if the company can be
as slipshod about one thing who knows what else they might have got wrong?
Note:
Calor Gas don't just sell to people like you and me -
they also hold a Royal Warrant as suppliers of LPG to Her Majesty the Queen and
the His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.
Peter's Tips - Black
Friday Special
I've already mentioned Ancestry's offer
on DNA tests - well worth considering if you plan to subscribe to Ancestry for
the next few years.
Not surprisingly Amazon are Having a BIG
sale, and you can support LostCousins when you use these links:
Amazon.co.uk
- Black Friday Amazon.com - Black Friday Amazon.ca - Black Friday
But if you're after books for Christmas
presents, The
Book People are my seasonal supplier, and their already low prices are
dropping even further until midnight on Sunday, with extra discounts on more
than 1600 books. As I like to give something a little special without breaking
the bank I've been looking through the list of signed
books, which includes books by Robert Harris, Hunter Davies, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, and the late Sir Terry Wogan.
There's free delivery when you spend over £25 and if you spend £40 you can
choose a free gift.
The other website I'll be visiting is AllBeauty, where
they have perfumes and other cosmetics at prices that beat the so-called
duty-free shops. And they now claim to offer free Worldwide delivery!
You can save AN EXTRA 15% at The
Book People on Monday 5th December when you use the discount code XMAS15.
That's all for now - but I'll be back
soon with yet more news from the world of family history.
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2016 Peter Calver
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