Newsletter
- 25th October 2015
Excitement
as release of 1939 Register approaches
What
about the records for Scotland & Northern Ireland?
Explore
Findmypast's existing records for peanuts ENDS
SATURDAY
Understanding
DNA #6: choosing the right company (continued)
23andMe
now allowed to offer medical information in the US
What
TalkTalk problems tell us about security
"Well,
here's another nice mess....."
Adopted?
Separated at birth? Want to be on TV?
Repairing
and caring for our ancestors' graves
The LostCousins newsletter is usually published
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Excitement as
release of 1939 Register approaches
It's precisely 8 years, 8 months, and 3
days since I emailed
the Office for National Statistics asking to inspect the 1939 Register - so
I've got every right to be excited about the imminent release of these
important records. But so have you, because it's arguably the most significant
release since the 1911 Census (in 2009).
If you read my article in
the last newsletter, which linked to an image of the household schedule, you'll
know exactly what information was collected on 29th September 1939 - and that
people were asked for their full birthdates. So it's an opportunity to discover
the precise birthdates of uncles, aunts, grandparents, great aunts and uncles, and
(for some) great-grandparents too. And whilst we don't know yet what Findmypast
are going to charge for access to the register, it's surely going to be a lot
cheaper than buying a birth certificate?
You'll find more information about the
register in this article
on the BBC website.
There has been some concern that the
only records available will be those for people who would be over 100 years
old, if still alive, as this cut-off point has been used for other releases.
However, because the 1939 Register was
subsequently used as the basis for the National Health Service Central Register
it continued to be updated into the 1990s (at which point it was computerised);
this means that we should also be able to see the records for most people who
were born after 1915, but died before the 1990s.
Note:
until April 2008 the General Register Office was responsible for administering
the NHS Central Register - at that point they handed over responsibility to the
NHS Information Centre, based in Leeds, although the original registers
continued to be stored at the GRO in Southport.
On Wednesday 4th November Myko Clelland from Findmypast
will be speaking about the 1939 Register to Peterborough Family History Society
- visitors are welcome. You'll find more details here.
Since publishing the newsletter I've been informed that Myko Clelland
will also be speaking in Cheshire
on 11th and 24th November, at Gloucestershire Archives
on 6th November, at the National Archives on 4th November,
at Huddersfield on 14th November,
and at Folkestone on 5th November.
Other dates and locations will be announced shortly.
What about the records
for Scotland & Northern Ireland?
Unfortunately it's only the parts of the
register that cover England & Wales that will be going online. The records
for Scotland and Northern Ireland are held by National Records of Scotland and
PRO Northern Ireland respectively; the records for the Isle of Man are not believed
to have survived.
It costs £15 (per person) to obtain an
extract from the Scottish register, and you'll need to
provide the date of death (and the certificate if they died outside of
Scotland); use this link.
I believe that the only way to get information from the Northern Ireland
register is using the Freedom of Information Act - follow this link
for details.
Explore Findmypast's
existing records for peanuts ENDS SATURDAY
Until midnight on Halloween (31st
October) you can pay just £1, $1, or 1€ for one month's unlimited access to the
'local' records and newspapers at the site you choose - it's a saving of about
90%!
This offer is not available to existing
subscribers and even if you're not a current subscriber you may find that you
need to log-out from the Findmypast site before
clicking the relevant link from the list below:
£1 for British records at Findmypast.co.uk
€1 for Irish records at Findmypast.ie
$1 for Australian and New Zealand
records at Findmypast.com.au
$1 for US and Canadian records at Findmypast.com
Note:
by using these links you'll not only be saving money, you'll be supporting
LostCousins. Should the link not work for you, please see this article from
my last newsletter.
At the end of the month your
subscription will continue at full price - unless you un-tick the 'auto-renew
my subscription' box in the My Account section of the site (it only takes 10
seconds). You might also choose to upgrade to an Annual subscription, which
works out cheaper (but must be paid for up-front), or to a World subscription.
Much of what I know about DNA I learned from Debbie
Kennett, either through her books,
her blog,
her talks at Genealogy in the Sunshine,
or through the ISOGG wiki
which she inspired and co-founded. A LostCousins member for almost 10 years,
Debbie is an Honorary Research Associate at University College London.
On Saturday 14th November Debbie will be
running a half-day course at the Society of Genealogists in London - it doesn't
start until 10.30 so you don't necessarily have to live in London to attend,
nor do you need to be a member of the SoG.
To book follow this link.
Understanding DNA #6:
choosing the right company (continued)
A number of readers have commented that,
despite the title of the article
in the last issue, I didn't really recommend which of the three major DNA
companies to choose for autosomal DNA tests (which are by far the most popular
DNA tests these days). They're absolutely right: there are so many factors to
take into consideration, most of which depend on your circumstances, and that's why I referred you to the ISOGG
comparison chart so that you could make your own judgment.
However, the ISOGG chart goes into too
much technical detail for most people, so I'm going to run over some of the key
factors you might want to take into account.....
There is only one company that offers
their test worldwide - Family Tree DNA. They're also the only company to charge
the same price all over the world. And they're the only one of the three to
allow researchers who have tested with other companies to upload their results
- though those who transfer have to pay $39 for full
access to matches (and you can only upload test results from 23andMe if their
v3 chip was used).
Only two of the companies (FTDNA and
23andMe) offer a chromosome browser, a feature that allows you to see where you
and another person match - this becomes more and more useful as you identify
more cousins, and as more of your known cousins test. There is a chromosome
browser at the mostly-free GEDmatch which you can use, even if you tested with
Ancestry - but only if you and the others have uploaded your results (I'll be
talking about how to do this in the next article in this series).
Two of the companies (Ancestry DNA and
23andMe) have over 1 million results in their databases; Family Tree DNA is
estimated to have just 150,000 or so. However if you live outside the US it's
worth bearing in mind that whilst Family Tree DNA have been offering their test
in Europe for several years, Ancestry and 23andMe have only recently expanded
outside the US (in Ancestry's case they only began selling abroad in January
2015). This means that whilst you will probably get fewer matches at Family
Tree DNA, they're more likely to be relevant for someone living in Europe.
Another factor to consider is that many people
who took 23andMe's test did so for medical purposes - and may have little or no
interest in their family tree; also, because test results from their new v4
chip can't be uploaded to Family Tree DNA (though you can upload them to
GEDmatch) you may miss some matches.
Note:
Ancestry DNA and Family Tree DNA both use the same chip to process autosomal
DNA, which means their results are highly compatible.
Nobody in my family has tested with
23andMe, so I can't speak from personal experience about the number of matches
you might expect, but I arranged for my brother to test with Ancestry DNA, then uploaded his results to Family Tree DNA. As you would
expect - given the disparity in the size of the respective databases - he has many
more matches at Ancestry (1800 compared with 600), but what stands out for me
is that there are significantly more close matches at Family Tree DNA.
This suggests that our cousins are
more likely to have tested with Family Tree DNA - which is not surprising when
you consider that we have European ancestry, and for a long time their Family
Finder test was the only autosomal test you could buy in Europe.
This is a key issue for the 90% of the
readers of this newsletter who don't
live in the US. If, on the other hand, you do
live in the US then the fact that the largest databases are heavily skewed
towards the US may or may not be a problem for you - it depends when your
ancestors arrived. Bear in mind that autosomal DNA tests become less useful
with each generation that you go back - because when you double the number of
ancestors you roughly halve the amount of DNA that is inherited from each one. This
means that if all your ancestors arrived on the Mayflower your chances of
getting a match with someone living in England is miniscule.
Both Ancestry and Family Tree DNA allow
their customers to upload family trees, but more Ancestry customers have
uploaded trees and they also tend to be more detailed. Another advantage of
Ancestry is the possibility that they'll spot a common ancestor between your
tree (if you've uploaded one) and the tree of one of the people you've been
matched with. My brother only has one of these matches at the moment, but it
seems to be a genuine match with a half-4th cousin once removed (which ties in
with Ancestry's estimate based on DNA of 5th to 8th cousin).
If you've already uploaded your tree to
Ancestry, or are happy to do so (it can be a private tree), then there are
definite advantages to testing with Ancestry, then uploading the results to
Family Tree DNA, so you can search for matches at both sites. It's going to be
more expensive, of course - someone in the UK would pay just £70 for the Family
Tree DNA test, compared to £119 (including shipping) for the Ancestry DNA test,
plus another £26 to get access to all the features at Family Tree DNA. But you might consider it's worth paying twice
as much to get all those extra matches, especially if you're able to order when
there's a discount offer.
In an ideal world, everyone who tested
at Family Tree DNA, Ancestry DNA, or 23andMe would upload their results to the
free GEDmatch site. That way it wouldn't matter nearly so much which company
you tested with, and you could choose on the basis of price (or other factors,
such as medical information or ethnicity estimates).
We don't live in an ideal world, but
because I tested with Family Tree DNA, whilst my brother tested with Ancestry
DNA, I was able to compare the numbers of results we got at GEDmatch - it was
about 1500 each. Whilst that's fewer results than the 1800 my brother got at
Ancestry, I think it's reasonable to assume that the researchers who upload
their results to GEDmatch are likely to be keener and more experienced than average
- and also more likely to respond to emails, which is a very important
consideration.
Whichever company you choose to test
with, you can support LostCousins by using one of the following links to place
your order:
23andMe now allowed to
offer medical information in the US
23andMe have finally received approval
from the US Food & Drug Administration to provide selected health-related
information to their customers. At one point they were forced to stop selling
their DNA test in the US, and they were only able to resume when all
health-related information was removed from the results.
The downside for family historians in
the US is that the price of the 23andMe test has doubled, from $99 to $199 -
bringing it more closely into line with the cost in other countries, where they
have continued to provide health-related data.
What TalkTalk problems
tell us about security
A few days ago the TalkTalk website was
hacked, and both credit card and bank details of 4m customers are thought to
have been stolen.
Hearing about this it made me really
glad that I'm not a TalkTalk customer - and also that we don't hold any of that
data at LostCousins. That's because we never have the data in the first place -
if you buy a LostCousins subscription using a credit or debit card card the
whole transaction is handled by WorldPay or PayPal
using a secure page on their own site. The disadvantage is that when you renew
your subscription you have to re-enter the data, but I think that's a small
price to pay for peace of mind - don't you?
I'm not in a position to advise you what
you should or shouldn't do if you're a TalkTalk customer, but if you've used
the same password at other sites you should seriously consider changing it (at
those other sites). Using the same password at more than one site might make
things easier, but it is also risky.
In the October issue of Director magazine there are some hints
on improving the security of passwords: it's suggested that we ditch complex
passwords which have a jumble of letters, numbers and special characters
because they can be counter-productive (for a start, a password like that is
likely to be written down or stored on your computer).
Instead, they recommend that we use passwords
made from four random words picked from the dictionary - their example is 'marmosetbelgiumpeanutsolstice' - on the basis that they're
fairly easy to remember, but jolly difficult to guess.
"Well, here's another
nice mess....."
As a young boy I used to watch silent
movies on my uncle's projector, and of course Laurel & Hardy were amongst
my favourites. I was reminded of Oliver Hardy's frequent complaint to Stan,
"Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into" when I read
about the confusion over Stan Laurel's birthplace, which caused considerable
embarrassment for the tourism organisation Visit County Durham.
Although Stan Laurel, born Arthur
Stanley Jefferson, was baptised and educated in Bishops Auckland, which is in
County Durham, he was born in Ulverston (now in
Cumbria), as you can see from this FreeBMD entry:
Unfortunately in 2010, Visit County
Durham printed 50,000 leaflets promoting Bishop Auckland which named it as the
birthplace of the comic - as a result they got lots of publicity, but probably
not the kind they wanted!
In our own research we tend to assume
that our ancestors were born in the parish where they were baptised, though we
know that after civil registration was introduced in 1837 this wasn't always
the case. How can we know where someone was actually born if the birth preceded
civil registration? The reality is that in most cases we'll never know for sure
- we can only weigh the evidence and use our judgment.
Note:
in September this year a collection of 41 letters from Stan Laurel to his
cousin Nellie Bushby failed to sell at auction. You
can read more in this BBC News article.
Adopted? Separated at
birth? Want to be on TV?
The production company CVTC, part of the
Rank Foundation, is making a new series for the TLC channel that will feature
people who have been, or are about to be, reunited with parents or siblings.
"Each episode will follow three to
four different stories of separation and reunion. Some will be retrospective,
whilst others will be reunions happening for the first time.
"The tone of the series is
uplifting and sympathetic to the experiences of those whose stories we follow;
we realise that we are addressing sensitive and extremely personal issues and
as such we are committed to telling peoples' stories in the most respectful
manner. The observational format allows participants to author their own story,
as opposed to being presenter-led or a chat show format. We don't take on the
search ourselves, but we can assist with expenses, such as travel costs as an
example.
"If you would like to find out
more, please do get in touch. You are not obliged to get involved by contacting
us, it’s just an opportunity for us to give you some
more information about the documentary."
The contact at CVTC is Georgia Smith,
whose email address is Georgia.smith@ctvc.co.uk
Since its establishment in the 1870s
Scotland Yard's crime museum has been hidden away, only open to police
personnel and invited guests. But until 10th April next year the Museum of
London is hosting an exhibition
which features objects from the museum - and demand is so high that advance
booking is strongly recommended.
To coincide with the exhibition there
are several talks and workshops - you can see the programme here
- and a book, Scotland
Yard's History of Crime in 100 Objects.
Note:
I've recently been re-watching Scotland
Yard, a series of 39 half-hour dramatisations of
real crime cases made between 1953-61. Initially shown
in cinemas they were later shown on the small screen, which is how I came to
see them (though I can't recall whether they were on the BBC, or on commercial television).
Introduced by Edgar Lustgarten, the famous
criminologist, they're very much of their era - and all the
better for that, in my opinion! And at less than £20 on DVD for all that
nostalgic entertainment you can't really go wrong.
Another exhibition
currently on in London features the Great War drawings of EH Shepard, best
known for his illustrations of Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh.
Running until 10th January, it coincides
with the publication of a book, Shepard's
War, which features over 100 of his drawings, cartoons, and paintings.
The main source of burial information
from the mid-19th century onwards is the DeceasedOnline
website, which has tens of millions of records - including over 8
million from London and 5 million from Lancashire. Obtaining information from
local authorities can otherwise be a very expensive exercise, with fees often
around £30 per name.
However there are a small number of
cemeteries which provide free online information - and on the London Borough of
Barking and Dagenham's website you can search for burials in three cemeteries , Rippleside, Eastbrookend, and Chadwell Heath.
This is the area where I grew up, and the last time I attended a funeral at Rippleside Cemetery I stumbled across - literally - the
graves of some of my relatives. When I searched on the website I was able to
identify several others, but only today I discovered another while writing this
article - perhaps I hadn't looked before she died in Hertfordshire, some
distance away.
Repairing and caring for our ancestors' graves
In the last newsletter I recounted the
sad story
of a Glasgow cemetery where many of the headstones had been pushed over or broken.
Sadly if we don't take any
responsibility for our ancestors' graves many more will suffer a similar fate
over time, so I was delighted to hear from Malvary in
Canada that after visiting the grave of her great-great grandparents in Devon
in 2012, and discovering that the headstone was broken (as you can see in the
photograph on the right), she came back to England the following year to meet
with a stonemason, and arranged to have it repaired at her own expense.
It's so easy to blame other people for
not doing things that we often forget that we too can make things happen, if
only we are prepared to spend the time and money.
What a great example Malvary
has set for the rest of us!
Sadly I've never come across a family Bible with clues
to my ancestry, but I know that others have been more fortunate, and Rena King - a LostCousins member
for over 8 years - recently sent me her book The
Family Bible: a Priceless Heirloom, which has been published by The Family History
Partnership.
I didn't find any references to people
from my family tree, but there are indexes of surnames and places at the back
of the book - so you may be more fortunate. But despite not finding anything
that will be help me directly with my research, I did learn quite a bit from
reading the book that will help me indirectly.
I received a lot of correspondence
following the article
in the last issue, and I think it's fair to say that most of you couldn't see
what the fuss was about.
One or two made the point that maiden
names were sexist because women are forced to take their husband's name on
marriage. But are they? My wife retained her maiden name when we married, and one
of my 1st cousins twice removed did the same when she married in 1951 - though
as she was a campaigner for women's rights in the workplace she might be
regarded an exception.
However there's another exception in a
different part of my tree, also from 1951, where my 2nd cousin took his wife's
surname when they married - and though when my stepmother married for the first
time in 1956 she took her husband's surname, she had forced him to change it
before she would agree to marry him.
So I'd argue that while there may have
been a time when women routinely took their husband's surname, those days are
long gone.
One of my favourite regular features is Gem from the Archive in Who Do You Think You Are? magazine, in which archivists talk about interesting and
unusual items in their collection.
In the November issue Patricia Kelly
from Kent History and Library Centre talks about a Women's Institute logbook
from the late 1940s which includes the most beautiful artwork - however the
main reason it caught my eye was the very impressive list of jams and preserves
that members had produced. (Will people one day look back at these newsletters
and wonder how I found the time to make so much jam?)
I know we don't visit archives as much
as we used to, now that so many more records can be accessed online, but it's
important to remember that even in 2015 only a small percentage are online. When
you next visit a record office, why not ask what special or unusual items they
have in their collection?
My first tip is to take advantage of
Findmypast offer above - everyone can afford £1, and there's no limit to what
you might discover during the month.
A good way to save on everyday spending
is to use a cashback credit card, and in the November issue of Which? (the magazine of the
Consumers' Association) the American Express Platinum Cashback Card comes top
of the table for those who spend an average of £500 a month or more. Although
there's a £25 annual fee, if you're referred by an existing cardholder you'll
get a £25 bonus, and there's also an introductory cashback rate of 5% during
the first three months (it's normally 1.25% which is still generous).
I signed up for one of these cards just
over a year ago and would be happy to refer any UK readers of this newsletter,
not least because this way I can earn up to £125 a year in referral bonuses (as
can you, once you become a cardholder!). Like most people I always pay my
credit card bill in full, so don't suffer interest or penalties - and I've
arranged for it to paid by direct debit, so it doesn't
depend on my memory.
Also in the same issue of Which? there's a
preview of the Amazon
Fire 7 tablet, which can be pre-ordered now, but won't ship in the UK until
6th November. At £49.99 it's very competitively priced, though obviously it
doesn't have the highest resolution or the fastest processor. If you buy 5 you
get the 6th free (and you get them all for only slightly more than the price of
a single iPad mini!).
Staying with gadgets, I've answered
quite a few questions about the BT8500
phone in one-to-one emails so I thought it might be worthwhile repeating
the advice here, since there's obviously some confusion:
Remember, if you don't speak to spammers
and scammers you can't be conned by them!
Finally, a reminder that two of the
offers I've written about in recent columns end this week: the Ratesetter
offer, which I wrote about here and
the Nationwide offer that I wrote about here.
Extra dates and venues have been added to the article on 1939
Register presentations.
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2015 Peter Calver
Please
do not copy any part of this newsletter without permission. However, you MAY
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