Newsletter - 11th
June 2020
Search tip: another use for wildcards EXCLUSIVE
GPO war dead commemorated online
What you'll find on Australian BDM certificates
Did your ancestors emigrate to Canada in the 19th
century?
Canada Day offer FREE
When a One-Place Study can help
Letters you won’t find in the modern alphabet
Confirming conventional research using DNA
Tying the Knot: an investigation of wedding
ceremonies past and present
Review: The Spanish Flu Epidemic
Thinking of writing your memoirs?
Save on Who Do You Think You Are?
subscriptions EXCLUSIVE
The LostCousins
newsletter is usually published 2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue
(dated 29th May) click here; to
find earlier articles use the customised Google search between this paragraph
and the next (it searches ALL of the newsletters since February 2009, so you
don't need to keep copies):
To go to the main
LostCousins website click the logo at the top of this newsletter. If you're not
already a member, do join - it's FREE, and you'll get an email to alert you
whenever there's a new edition of this newsletter available!
This
week I received a request for help from someone who isn’t a LostCousins member
and - to the best of my knowledge - isn’t even researching their family tree.
I'd
normally turn such requests away - after
all, this newsletter goes out to more than 68,000 people who are members,
so I have quite enough on my plate already - but on this occasion it was a
matter of life or death. The lady who wrote was trying to help her half-sister,
whose dying wish is to be reunited with her cousin Douglas - and I knew that by
using my experience and the resources at my fingertips I'd have a much better
chance of tracking him down than anyone else whose assistance she might be able
to enlist.
It
wasn't easy - it turned out that the surname I'd been given doesn’t exist, so I
had to hazard a guess at what it ought to be. Even then I was unable to find anyone
with the forename Douglas who fitted the bill, so I enquired whether he was a maternal
and paternal cousin, then tried looking for his parents - first by searching
for marriages between couples with the right surnames, then by examining where
and when their children were born.
I
still couldn’t find a Douglas, but eventually I came across a Dudley who was
born around the right time, and had parents with the right surnames. Even
better, there was a Dudley on the Electoral Register in the town where
'Douglas' was last known to have lived.
Could
the two names have been confused? The
chances of this having occurred increased dramatically when the next email I
received referred not to 'Douglas', but to 'Dougie' - it certainly seemed very
possible that the name 'Dudley', one that isn’t nearly as common nowadays as it
was in my youth, had been misheard.
Eureka
- maybe. 3 hours and 20 minutes after the initial contact I sent through what I
hoped was the right name and address - and waited. Later that evening I
received this email:
Hi Peter,
I cannot thank you enough, it WAS my sister's
cousin and she is so made up he has already messaged her and she is beyond
happy. A Million Trillion Billion thanks.
For
me it wasn't a big thing to do - a couple of hours of my time, and whilst it
delayed the release of this newsletter by a day, that's surely not such a big
deal? You would probably have done the same in my position, even though it was
for someone you didn’t know.
And
yet, it strikes me that there a few people reading this who haven’t entered
anyone on their My Ancestors page, so haven’t provided their own cousins
with a chance to connect!
Let
me be perfectly clear - if you’re one of those people and you don’t make the effort,
some of your cousins will die without you ever knowing of their existence, and
without being able to share their discoveries with you.
How
long will you leave it before showing that you care, by reaching out to your
'lost cousins'? For goodness sake, I'm not asking you to be a Good Samaritan
and help someone from a different tribe - I'm asking you to help people from
your own tribe!
Search tip: another use for wildcards EXCLUSIVE
Wildcards
are great characters - typically you can use an asterisk (*) to represent any
number of characters, rather like a blank tile in Scrabble, but better! At
Findmypast there doesn’t seem to be any limit to how many wildcards you can
use, although it's important to be aware that they can only be used fields
which accept free-form text.
Although
wildcards are normally used as a way of getting more results, not fewer, I recently
discovered an unusual way of utilising them when searching the 1939 Register by
occupation. A member of the LostCousins Forum came across someone whose
occupation was described by the enumerator as 'Underpaid domestic duties' - probably
a transcription error (there was a war on, after all). I thought it would be
interesting to search for other instances, but found that searching for 'Underpaid
domestic duties' produced nearly 8 million results, suggesting that it was
carrying out a keyword search.
But
even when I limited my search to the single word 'Underpaid' I still got
millions of results - it was only when I added wildcard characters on either
side, and searched for '*Underpaid*' that it finally worked as I wanted.
GPO
war dead commemorated online
Nearly
13,000 Post Office employees lost their lives fighting in the two World Wars,
and the GPO War Heroes site lists them all - you'll find it here.
What
you'll find on Australian BDM certificates
Down
under they don’t talk about BMDs, it's BDMs - an arrangement that is
alphabetically correct, but chronologically awry.
Australian
certificates tend to provide much more information than those for England &
Wales, but the information on certificates varies over time, and also by state;
similarly the dates for which certificates are available varies by state. This page compiled by LostCousins member
Graham Jaunay provides an amazingly comprehensive guide to what you can expect
to see.
Warning:
the more information there is on a certificate the more likely that there will
be errors, and this is especially true of death certificates.
Did your ancestors emigrate to Canada in the 19th
century?
In
the last newsletter I commented how many people living in the UK are unaware
that they have cousins in the New World. If you have relatives who disappeared from
the censuses during the 19th century you might find that they sailed to
Ontario, Canada.
Over
29,000 emigrants who arrived in Ontario between 1865-1883 have been indexed
online at the Ontario Archives site, and can be searched free if you follow
this link.
Although
most of the records in the archives are not online, if you’re not familiar with
Canadian records it's well worth looking through the research guides that you'll
find here.
A
lot of people don’t realise that we use the 1881 Census of Canada to connect
cousins who are researching the same ancestors, so to encourage the thousands
of members in Canada to spread the good news to friends and relatives I've come
up with an offer especially for those who have relatives (not necessarily ancestors)
on that census.
Until
Canada Day, 1st July, you can connect with cousins who share your relatives on
the Canadian census whether or not you have a LostCousins subscription -
potentially saving you about $17.
This
offer applies to both new and existing members, so it's an excellent time to
tell Canadian friends and cousins about the benefits of joining LostCousins
(which, of course, include this newsletter). You don’t need an offer code, and
there's no catch - just start entering your relatives from 1881 and see who you
can find!
Tip:
relatives you enter from any of the 1881 censuses before the end of June will
also count as free entries in my competition - the top prize is $1000
When
a One-Place Study can help
Margaret
wrote to me from Australia a few days ago:
"Recently I had a Lost Cousins match
with Heather. She is not a relative of mine, but is carrying out a One Place Study
in respect of Great Ellingham, Norfolk.
"The match was a
small family of my former husband's: William Miller, his wife and one
child, in 1841, and in 1852 the family emigrated to Melbourne, Australia.
Heather was interested to know about
them. Well, that spurred me on to more research!
"Heather has now written and published a
lovely piece in her blog - she also
found more about the family than I had.
"Because almost all my husband's and my
families arrived in Australia in the 1840s and 1850s Lost Cousins matches are
rare, and highly prized.
"I love reading your newsletter,
Peter. This match is to me a bonus."
Coincidentally
I also heard from Heather, who is very pleased with the matches she has made -
perhaps her success will encourage others who are carrying out One-Place
Studies to use LostCousins to further their research?
Note:
if you're considering formalising your research into a village or street into a
One-Place Study there's no better person to advise you than Janet Few - you can
read my review of her latest book here.
Letters you won’t find in the modern alphabet
In
2014 I wrote
about two characters that you'll find in parish registers, but which aren’t part
of our modern alphabet, This fascinating YouTube
video will tell you about other letters that have been dropped since
medieval times.
There's more drama in
the emails I receive from LostCousins members than in any television programme
- I just wish I could publish all of them, but often the best stories have to
remain confidential to protect the privacy of those involved.
I first heard the
story below in November 2018 - it has taken until now to get permission from
all concerned, but I think you'll agree that it’s a tale worth waiting for.
Here's what Anthony told me:
"My mum had
three first cousins with a surname called Horsey: one of them, Harry Alfred
Horsey, was a pilot who flew in WW2. His extensive experience included flying
Hurricanes and Spitfires, but when his Tempest V developed a problem in April
1945 he was forced to land behind enemy lines in Germany; he was taken in for
the night by the local Burgermaster. The following morning a report was made to
Varrelbusch Aerodrome and at 10:00am on 3rd April Harry was collected by Rolf
Brinkman, former Oberfeldwebel at Varrelbusch, and Wenner Assumussin, former Feldwebel
at the same aerodrome. Shortly afterwards Brinkman and Assumussin took Harry away
and Brinkman shot him in cold blood (you can read a more detailed version here).
"Harry was murdered
less than 4 weeks before Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker - unlike Hitler,
who had married his mistress Eva Braun the day before, Harry was just 22 and unmarried
when he died.
"A few years
earlier another RAF officer, whom I believe to have been a bomber pilot, had
married and they had a son, John - but in 1941, just 2 months before John was
born, his father was killed in action. A few years later his widow remarried
and she bore two more children.
"Many years
later, when John's mum was 96, he and his own daughters were clearing out his
mum's house (she has since moved into a care home) when they found a suitcase
of photographs in the loft. In the suitcase was a photograph of an airman,
"Harry", complete with a loving message from him written on the back.
John's daughters noticed that Harry was a dead ringer for their father when
younger. When John showed the photo to his mum, despite her failing memory, she
immediately said 'Ah, that's Harry - he was shot by the Germans'.
"John is now 78,
and a couple of Christmases ago his daughters bought him a DNA test. When John
checked the results of the DNA test he found that there were no matches with
his own surname [not that unusual, I don't have any either - Peter]. Around
the same time I contacted him - John was
one of my best DNA matches - and I had mentioned Horsey as one of my family history
surname interests. The 1944/5 photograph of an RAF airman called Horsey, his
physical likeness to John and the DNA evidence convinced John and his family
that Harry was his actual father.
"Happily enough,
I have loads of Horsey family photos and memorabilia because my mum and her
sister Deirdre were obviously very close to their cousins. The murder of a
close cousin had been a shock to them and there were several newspaper cuttings
and photos. My wife Denise and I arranged to meet John and his wife - coincidentally
he lives about 13 miles away from us, even though his family were from down south. His story had been quite overwhelming but
John was delighted with what I was able to show him as much of it was new to
him.
"John and I keep
in touch and he has also been able to find a first cousin, with whom he was
able to exchange memorabilia and life histories when they met. What a story!
DNA played a vital role in confirming the genetic connection and allowing the
new family relationships to become established. I wonder how many thousands of people
who have had DNA tests will have had similar life changing experiences?"
Confirming conventional research using DNA
Although
the main reason most of us test our DNA is to overcome deficiencies in the
records and knock down 'brick walls' that a few years ago would have seemed
impregnable, a beneficial side-effect is the ability to confirm our
records-based research. No matter how meticulous we can rarely be 100% certain
that we've found the right baptism, and therefore the right parents - and
whilst it might give us some comfort to find that other researchers have come
to the same conclusion, we can't ignore the possibility that they might have made
the same mistake, probably for the same reasons.
DNA
provides a completely independent check on our research, and whilst the reach
of DNA is generally only about 6 generations (ie 5th cousins), we have so many
more distant cousins that we're inevitably going to have DNA matches with some
of them. Indeed, over half of our DNA matches are likely to be with relatives
who are 6th, 7th, 8th cousins - or even more distant.
For
example, in the last few weeks I've come across several 8th cousins once
removed in North America who share my 7G grandparents Francis Medley and Mary
Linnett, who married at St Barnabas, Great Tey, Essex in 1674. I can now be confident
that my research on my paternal grandmother's Bright line is accurate as far
back as 1780, when Richard Bright married Mary Medley, and that the Medley line
is accurate back to 1674.
So
whilst knocking down previously unscalable 'brick walls' is the greatest benefit
of DNA testing, it's important not to disregard the secondary benefits that
come from verifying our records-based research. After all, you might not make
mistakes, but vicars certainly did!
Note:
I'm hoping that DNA will also solve the
mystery of who Richard Bright's parents were - he was baptised in the
non-conformist chapel at Coggeshall in 1756 but, unfortunately for me, the
minister failed to enter the name of either parent in the notebook that
sufficed as a record of baptisms.
A few days ago I
ordered a DVD of Simon & Garfunkel's 1981 concert in Central Park. The film
was directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who'd previously directed promotional
videos for both the Rolling Stones and
the Beatles, as well as the documentary Let It Be.
The
name seemed familiar, and I discovered that I'd recently bookmarked an article
which claimed that he is the illegitimate son of Orson Welles, although a DNA
test apparently proved inconclusive (see this 2010 article
in the Guardian).
But
what inspired me to write about him was the discovery that, according to Wikipedia,
Lindsay-Hogg had a long-term relationship with Jean Marsh, best known for her
below stairs role in Upstairs Downstairs (which she created with fellow
actress Eileen Atkins). And that's intriguing because Michael Lindsay-Hogg is
actually Sir Michael Edward Lindsay-Hogg, 5th Baronet, so very much upstairs!
Tying the Knot: an investigation of wedding ceremonies
past and present
Professor
Rebecca Probert, whose books on marriage law will be well-known to many of you,
has asked if LostCousins members can help with a project she is planning - and
based on past experience I knew you would be delighted to co-operate. The remainder
of this article was written by Professor Probert.
The
proposed project forms part of a wider study examining the laws regulating how
and where couples can get married. The structure of the current law – with its
division between civil and religious weddings, the differential treatment of
Anglican, Jewish, Quaker weddings, and the registration of buildings rather
than officiants – all dates back to the Marriage Act 1836.
While
the annual reports of the Registrar General provide very detailed statistics on
how many people married in different types of ceremonies, it remains unclear
why certain areas had higher levels of civil or Nonconformist marriage than
others. Drawing on the wealth of knowledge generated by family historians
provides a unique way of obtaining an insight into this. The project will also
collate and disseminate the information in a way that will help the wider family
history community understand this area.
How
can YOU help?
Did
any of your ancestors marry in a register office in England and Wales?
•
If so, could you provide details of the location of the wedding, the age and
occupation of the parties, and any reasons why they might have chosen to marry
in a register office?
Were
any of your English and Welsh ancestors Catholics or Nonconformists?
•
If so, could you provide details of when and where they married – whether in a
register office, Catholic or Nonconformist church, or in the Anglican church?
If they did not marry in a place of worship that matched their religious affiliation,
do you know why?
If
you would like to share this information please email Professor Probert at R.J.Probert@exeter.ac.uk with these and any further details you would
like to share (or any questions about the project). Emailing the information
will be deemed to be consent to it being used as set out below. Taking part in
the research does not pose any foreseeable risks to those providing
information.
How
will the information be used?
All
data will be entered into an Excel spreadsheet on a password-protected computer.
It will be kept for 10 years and then destroyed.
The
findings will inform a monograph on the history of the current law of marriage.
A summary of the findings will be made available to all those who provided
information and will be disseminated to the family history community more
widely.
All
personal data (eg email addresses) will be processed in line with the data
protection principles under the GDPR.
Who
has reviewed this study?
This
project has been reviewed by the Research Ethics Committee at the University of
Exeter (Reference Number 201920-095).
Further
information and contact details
If
you are not happy with any aspect of the project and wish to complain you are
welcome to contact the University’s ethics team at ssis-ethics@exeter.ac.uk
Thank
you for your interest in this project
I wrote a while back
about Hydrogen Peroxide, which I use to
disinfect groceries when they arrive - but I hadn't considered another option,
perhaps because I hadn’t encountered it for nearly 60 years.
LostCousins
member William tells me that in the 1980s Milton tablets, traditionally used
for sterilising babies' bottles, were also used in laboratories for washing down
surfaces or cleansing hands (the active ingredient is Sodium Hypochlorite).
I
don’t have any Milton in my store cupboard but I do have a large tub of food
grade Citric Acid, which I normally use
for descaling kettles (but would have come in useful for Elderflower Champagne
had I been quicker off the mark picking the elderflowers). Apparently this can
also be used to kill the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 (see this US
government website
for some more suggestions).
Review: The Spanish Flu Epidemic
Published
in 2019 to mark the centenary of the 1918-19 pandemic, The Spanish Flu
Epidemic and its Influence on History has turned out to be even more timely
than anyone could have imagined. According to the dust jacket, Jaime Breitnauer
- the British born author - divides her time between the UK and New Zealand. One
can only hope, for her sake, that she found herself in New Zealand in March,
when COVID-19 began to devastate Europe.
Told partly from the
perspective of those who contracted the novel influenza, it looks at how the
crisis was handled in different countries around the world. There are some
disturbing echoes of the conflicting
viewpoints we see today: in Brazil, for example, the journal A Careta
had suggested that Spanish flu had been manufactured in Germany as a weapon,
and insinuated that the government would use the situation to interfere in the
private affairs of its citizens. In Washington DC every hospital bed was
filled, and the undertakers had run out of coffins; in Sweden the medical board
initially advised that the epidemic was mild, leading to local authorities
taking different decisions: in Stockholm schools remained open, in some other
cities they were closed.
By
the time of the Armistice on 11th November 1918 over 1.5 million German soldiers
had died from flu - it clearly must have encouraged the Germans to sue for
peace. Within Germany all sorts of cures were being touted: a malaria drug,
quinine, was thought by some to protect against the virus, though others
recommended eating beetroot or inhaling onion juice.
The
first wave of influenza was followed by a second wave which targeted the young,
triggering a 'cytokine storm' - also one of the most deadly aspects of COVID-19.
In fact there are many similarities between what happened a century ago and
what is happening now, though thankfully we have a better understanding of viruses
than we did then - viruses were too small to be seen under optical microscopes,
and it was only the invention of the electron microscope in the 1930s that
allowed them to be seen.
Reading
this book made me realise that what we're going through at the moment isn't
unprecedented - simply unprecedented in living memory. In the (often misquoted)
words of the philosopher George Santayana, "Those who cannot remember the
past are condemned to repeat it".
I
read the hardback, but if you live in the UK the Kindle version of this book is
currently available for just £3.99 - a real bargain!
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca Amazon.com.au
Many of you will know
Anne Harvey as the author of numerous articles in family history magazines, so you
won’t be surprised to know that she's a LostCousins member. However that wasn't
the reason I've been reading Such A Time As This,
the third book in her series about a group of young people living in Lancashire
in the late 1950s and early 1960s - I read it because I enjoyed her first two
books so much!
I
may be a decade younger than the key characters in the book, but it still
brought back memories for me - and I suspect it would for many of you. The societal
changes of the last 60 years have been phenomenal, but those us who have lived
through them have mostly adapted and come to regard them as normal, so it was a
delight to remember how things used to be - and if you grew up in a different
country you'll find it interesting to compare your own experiences with those
in the book.
I
really enjoyed this book, but I would recommend reading the books in order as elements
of the story carry over from one book to the next. If you missed out on the
earlier books you'll find my reviews here and here;
if you didn’t, then you don't need me to tell you to buy the third book!
I
read the book on my smartphone - for me it’s the ideal way to read fiction,
since I can dip in and out at any time. And at just £1.99 each for Kindle versions
the books are a bargain - you could buy them all for the price of a single
magazine. But if you prefer to stay with paper, as I know many of you do, look
out for second-hand copies of the earlier books - in the UK you can pick them up at Amazon for
just over £3 each.
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca Amazon.com.au
Thinking of writing your memoirs?
I've
no doubt there are many people reading this who have thought of writing an
autobiographical memoir - though I suspect that the number who have actually put
pen to paper is much, much lower. Writing about our own experiences is
self-indulgent, which means it’s a challenge to make it interesting to others,
even members of your own family - but if
you follow the advice in this free online
course your chances of success will be far higher.
Save on Who Do You Think You Are?
subscriptions EXCLUSIVE
I've
been a reader of Who Do You Think You Are? magazine since it launched.
Even though I have many sources of information there are always a few things in
the magazine that I didn’t already know, plus a few that I'd forgotten, so I
always read it as soon as possible after it arrives through my letterbox (after
disinfecting it, of course!).
I'm
delighted that I've been able to persuade Who Do You Think You Are? to
offer a special deal for LostCousins members in the UK - 6 issues of the
magazine for just £9.99 (less than you'd pay at the newsagents for 2 issues).
To
take advantage of this offer please follow this link.
After
my wife and I began self-isolating on Friday 13th March it was nearly 3 weeks
before we were able to get our first Tesco delivery slot, and even then we had
to wait a further 3 weeks for the actual delivery. Those first few weeks of
uncertainty were worrying, but also exciting, as we found sources of food in
the garden that we hadn’t used before - nettles and sorrel - and discovered
recipes that we hadn’t tried before.
These
days I've discovered that it’s possible to get delivery slots at fairly short
notice - for example, when I looked on Saturday morning there were delivery slots
available for the following Saturday and Sunday. They were evening slots, so
not particularly convenient, and the delivery charges ranged from £5 to £6, which
is at the top end of the range, but for older people like me it's so much safer
than going to the supermarket in person. In the past three months I've only
risked one visit to the petrol station, one to our local minimarket (at 6am),
and two click-and-collect orders which I could pick up outside the store.
The
real challenge is to vary the menu - it's so easy to buy the same things and
cook the same recipes, but there are only so many times I can eat roast chicken
- cheap and healthy though it might be compared to many of the alternatives. In
the old days (before coronavirus) my menus were partly determined by what I
found on the reduction shelves at the supermarket, so a degree of variety was inevitable
- but now I have to provide the creative input.
Overall
we're probably eating a bit less, or would be were it not for our late
afternoon snack while we watch the Downing Street Press Briefing, and
sympathise with the politicians, clinicians, and scientists who have to answer loaded
questions from journalists (I don’t know about you, but I've noticed that the questions
from the public are generally much more insightful). Nevertheless I'm still more
than 10 pounds lighter than I was 3 months ago, which is something to be pleased
about, especially when you consider that obesity is a risk factor for COVID-19.
One
side-effect of the pandemic has been buying more frozen vegetables - which can
be cheaper as well as easier to prepare - button sprouts are a particular
favourite of ours. A bonus is that many frozen vegetables come in resealable packs
which, when empty, can be washed and used for other food - the best sort of
recycling!
This is where any major updates and corrections will be
highlighted - if you think you've spotted an error first reload the newsletter
(press Ctrl-F5) then
check again before writing to me, in case someone else has beaten you to
it......
Finally, a reminder that my competition has been extended to the
end of June - and the top prize of $1000/£1000/€1000 is still to be won! Will
you be the lucky one?
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2020 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?