Newsletter – 23rd
July 2020
Findmypast add more Surrey registers
Ancestry DNA changes – what you need to do now!
When a change in perspective can make all
the difference
Another 'brick wall' comes tumbling down
'I was found as a baby wrapped in my mum's coat –
but who am I?'
GEDmatch site out of action following security
breach
Family Tree Maker users' data compromised
Review: The Nonconformist Revolution
Review: Ian Fleming's Inspiration: the Truth Behind the Books
The LostCousins
newsletter is usually published 2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue
(dated 14th July) 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!
Findmypast add more Surrey registers
Until
recently Ancestry was the only source of parish registers for Surrey, and when
I reached a 'brick wall' on my Surrey lines I had nowhere else to turn. Then
Findmypast became a second source, adding their own index and transcripts in
stages – and last week they added another 1.3 million new records to the connection.
Would this allow me to knock down some of my 'brick walls'? Yes
it would!
Follow
this link
for a parish by parish list of what's in the collection – like me, you could be
pleasantly surprised.
Ancestry DNA changes – what you need to do now!
Last
week I revealed
Ancestry's plans to improve the quality of DNA matches by removing most matches
where less than 8cM is shared; I estimate that for most people this will mean
losing between one-third and one-half of all their matches. The change will
take effect at some point during August, and as 1st August is little more than
a week away you can’t afford to delay, so in this article I'm going to explain
what you need to do.
But
before we get going, there is an excellent post
on Blaine Bettinger's blog which is well worth
reading, especially if you're struggling to comprehend the rationale behind the
planned change. However if you want to fully understand the background see
Ancestry's White
Paper – whilst it's inevitably hard going in parts, considering the
complexity of the subject I think they've done a very good job of making it
accessible.
To
put the changes into context, there are very few people who have fewer than
20,000 matches at Ancestry, and much higher numbers have been reported, in some
cases over 100,000. In practice nobody can possibly evaluate every single
match, so what's most important is to have some way of
identifying the matches that are most likely to be useful. There are two key
strategies in my DNA
Masterclass: you can search your matches' trees for surnames that are important
to your research (ie the surnames of your ancestors),
or you can search them for places. Please see the Masterclass for full details
of how to go about these searches because there are some important considerations
that won't be obvious.
If
a match of 6cM or 7cM doesn't show up in response to
any of these searches, it's extremely unlikely that it would be of any use in
your research in the future. If it does, there is no need to analyse it closely
at this juncture – simply add a Note so that it won’t be
deleted next month when the new match criteria are implemented. Of course, some
matches will show up in response to more than one search – and the larger the
other person's tree is, the more likely this is (though as the searches only
look at direct ancestors there isn't a linear relationship).
Adding
a Note isn't the only way to preserve a match, though
in most cases it will be the best option. Alternatives are to add a coloured dot
(ie add the match to user-defined group), or to send
a message to the other user. Starred matches will also be preserved.
When a change in perspective can make all the
difference
In
Blaine Bettinger's blog post (see above) he describes
small matching segments of DNA as 'poison' – and reminds us that even when the
segment is genuine, there's rarely anything to prove which ancestor it came
from; the fact that you can document a relationship to your prospective DNA
cousin doesn't prove that the segment came from the common ancestor(s), because
we're usually related in multiple ways to our most distant cousins. Look at the
numbers – the table in the Masterclass shows how many cousins we have, on
average, and against 10th cousin the figure is 80 million, more than the
population of Britain.
But
there are circumstances when we can be much more certain about our connection –
for example, I recently wrote
about my DNA connections to several 8th cousins once removed in North America.
Now, as the chance of cousins that distant sharing any DNA segments is roughly
1 in 200 you'd be right to be sceptical – and in the light of Blaine Bettinger's comments you'd probably suggest that there's
another, more recent, connection that I've yet to find.
However there are some good reasons why your
analysis might be wrong. First is that the greater natural resources and better
living conditions in the Colonies meant that not only did my migrant cousin and
his descendants have large families, more of them survived than would have been
the case had they remained in England. In fact, a conservative calculation
suggests that there are likely to be upwards of 20,000 living descendants, of
whom over 100 will share my DNA – so the fact that I've found three at Ancestry
isn’t that surprising given how many tests they have sold.
Equally
importantly, the ancestor of these three cousins emigrated to the American
Colonies around 1700, so the chances of there being a more recent, but so far
unidentified, connection to me is greatly reduced. Furthermore, the three
cousins are descended from branches that split around 1740 and 1800 – so the
chance that they are all connected to me in some other way must be extremely small.
I
suspect that Blaine Bettinger was writing from the
perspective of an American with tens of thousands of matches to other Americans; as an Englishman with many thousands of matches
to Americans I see things rather differently. We all have to
adjust our thinking and our tactics slightly according to our particular
situation – not because our family is special (except to us), but because everyone's
tree is different.
Even
when a DNA match is genuine, and Ancestry have identified that we have Common
Ancestors, that doesn't guarantee that the family
trees that my cousins have drawn up are correct. Because I manage DNA results for
numerous cousins I'm having to spend more time than most preparing for next
month's change – and working though the Common Ancestors matches of one of my
2nd cousins I discovered quite a tangled web.
It
starts with the birth of two Samuel Brights – one the
son of my great-great-great grandparents Ebenezer Bright and Sarah Precious,
the other the son of Ebenezer's brother Richard. They were born around the same
time, both were baptised in the non-conformist chapel in Coggeshall (in 1819
and 1821) and both of them married around the same time; however only one of
them lived long enough to be recorded on the 1851 Census – Richard's son, who
was married to Caroline Stowers.
Samuel
and Caroline had married in the parish church but his
cousin Samuel married Mary Raven in a register office. And perhaps that's why
most Ancestry trees show Richard's Samuel marrying Mary Raven - because he died
before the 1851 Census it wouldn't have been immediately obvious that they had
the wrong Samuel; the Samuel married to Caroline wouldn't even have been on
their radar. Samuel's age at death in 1848 (shown as 31 in the GRO index) would
have been a clue, but of course it's only in the last few years that age at
death has been shown in the index for the period 1837-64.
Samuel
and Mary Bright had a son called Albert Samuel, born in 1844. Most Ancestry
trees show, correctly, that he married Lucy Turner Harris – but they show the
date of marriage as 1863, not 1867. The only evidence presented for this
earlier is this 1911 Census entry:
© Crown Copyright Image reproduced by courtesy of The National
Archives, London, England and used by kind permission of Findmypast
I
don’t know about you, but it looks to me as if the
number of years married has been altered from 46 to 48. In fact, neither is
correct – what they were doing was covering up the fact that their first child
was born in 1864, three years before they married:
Again most Ancestry trees have got this wrong – several
don’t attach any birth information to the record for 'Flora', but rely on
census entries, such as this one from 1871:
© Crown Copyright Image reproduced by courtesy of The National
Archives, London, England and used by kind permission of Findmypast
To
add to the confusion her age has been incorrectly transcribed as 4 by Ancestry,
and some of the tree owners didn't notice – so they were not only looking for
the wrong name, they were looking in the wrong year. In fact, some came up with
this entry:
Of
course, the new GRO birth index (which gives the mother's maiden name)makes it clear that it's the wrong family, but someone
relying on the contemporary quarterly indexes wouldn’t know. How many of us go
back and check our past research when new information becomes available? Too few
I suspect!). Florence Bright married Robert Browning Smith and my DNA cousin is
descended from their son Robert Bright Smith – however nobody with a public
tree has figured out that when he married in 1919, he did so as Robert Bright
Browning. His father signed the register as Smith, so perhaps the son changed
his name when he signed up for the Navy (as plain Robert Browning) in WW1. It wouldn’t be the first time that someone changed his name
when joining the services.
© Crown Copyright Image reproduced by courtesy of The National
Archives, London, England and used by kind permission of Findmypast
In
this example I have investigated a single DNA match, identifying several name
changes and tree errors along the way. It's instructive to note that despite
the numerous errors and misunderstandings that I identified I was eventually
able to prove that the person with whom my 2nd cousin shares a fairly short
(10cM) DNA segment is indeed a cousin of ours, though a 4th cousin and not – as
Ancestry deduced by looking at the erroneous trees – a 5th cousin.
Now
I have to go back and tell numerous people that their
tree is wrong……
Note:
the record card above is just the first page of the service record for my cousin
– it's the first time I've used the Royal
Naval Division Service Records 1914-1920 at Findmypast. Interestingly in
1914 they were both living at the same farm where my great-great-great
grandparents were farming in 1833, and quite possibly earlier. The farm is
still there today, though as far as I know my family are no longer associated
with the property.
Another 'brick wall' comes tumbling down
Sherree recently managed to break down one of her
highest 'brick walls', and she has kindly allowed me to share with you the
story of how she managed it:
I thought you might be interested in how, by
using DNA, myself and my daughter were able to track down my 3xgreat
grandparents, who have eluded us for a considerable number of years. The story
starts with my 2x great grandfather George Vinten
bp.1807, Orpington, Kent to William & Rachel Vinten.
Most people claim George's father is William
Birch/Burch Vinten bp.15/12/1776 in Tonbridge to
parents William and Sarah. He was, presumably named in honour of his paternal
grandparents – another William and his wife Elizabeth (nee BIRCH). I also
assumed this was the case for a number of years,
although I was always slightly sceptical for the following reasons:
· William never uses
the middle name Birch/Burch in subsequent records (eg
his marriage, the census, marriage certificates of his children, his death certificate);
· Whilst not a million
miles away, Tonbridge (where he was baptised) cannot be considered ‘very close’
to Chislehurst (place of marriage) or Orpington (where children are baptised);
· Neither of us ever
matched DNA with anyone who claimed descent through William Birch/Burch
VINTEN’s siblings;
· The Will of William
Birch/Burch VINTEN’s father (also called William) was written in 1806. In this document,
William senior mentions his wife, Sarah, and his surviving daughters. He then
quite markedly refers to ‘my two sons Samuel and Thomas’. There is no mention
of his eldest son William Birch/Burch at all, which leads me to believe that he
had died by the time the Will was written in 1806.
Rachel’s maiden name has always eluded us;
recently, however, I found a marriage between one William WILLEN and a Rachel
VOLLINGS in 1794 in Chislehurst (Kent). Because of the pandemic I can’t view the actual entry in the parish register, so I’m
relying on a transcription. It’s not inconceivable
that VINTEN could have been mistranscribed – or even
misheard in the first place.
Rachel was baptised on 21/5/1775 in Orpington
to parents Edward VOLLINS and Elizabeth (nee BLAND or BLUND). We added Rachel’s surname to the ancestry
tree that is linked to our DNA test results. Much to our delight, I matched
with several descendants of Rachel’s siblings which lends support to the fact
that she is indeed our direct ancestor.
If this was ‘our’ Rachel, then; it must mean
that the William she married is also ‘our’ William. As I said most people I know of claim descent from William Birch (or Burch)
VINTEN, bp.15/12/1776 in Tonbridge to parents William and Sarah.
I have identified an alternative candidate
for William, husband of Rachel, which is backed up both by paper records and
DNA evidence. There is a William VINSON baptised 1/9/1776 in Shoreham, Kent to
Anne VINSON (no father given). Shoreham is only 9 miles from Chislehurst
(location of the marriage to Rachel) and only 6 miles from Orpington (where the
couple’s children are baptised and where Rachel was herself baptised).
DNA evidence means that I’m
as certain as I can be that that Anne, mother of William, is the same Anne
VINETON who was baptised in 1758 in Brenchley, Kent
to Abraham VINETON and Mary RILEY. For instance, I match DNA with other
descendants of Abraham and Mary and paper records exist to support the lines of
descent of the following matches:
· SF (6th cousin once
removed) who descends from Abraham and Mary’s daughter Susan/Susannah VINSON,
baptised 1742 in Bidborough, Kent; and
· KR (6th cousin twice
removed) who descends from Abraham and Mary’s daughter Elizabeth VINTON,
baptised 1747 in Tonbridge, Kent.
After a long search and several unsuccessful
death certificate purchases we have also found the
record of William Vinten's death in the Southwark workhouse
in 1847.
It's a sad story really
in that this William was baptised as William VINSON in 1776, married as William
WILLEN in 1794 and buried as William VINDOM in 1847. No-one else (from what I can ascertain) has
connected these 3 events as being for the same person - really
only being confirmed by the DNA evidence now becoming available.
So to all your readers, an example of how
just continuing to return to a tricky problem over the years may yet allow a
breakthrough, perhaps as more info is becoming available online, and the use of
DNA has solved the problem of my 3xgreat grandparents. Now to tackle the problem of the illegitimate
William Vinson's unknown father…..
'I was found as a baby wrapped in my mum's coat – but who
am I?'
Whether
you read the article
on the BBC News site, or can spare 52 minutes to listen to the podcast, you'll be
enthralled by this story of a man, abandoned as a baby during WW2, and who was
still trying to find out who his parents were after more than 70 years..
GEDmatch site out of action following security breach
The
GEDmatch website, which I use occasionally, is currently offline following an
unusual security breach. This message was posted on their Facebook page:
"On the morning of July 19, GEDmatch
experienced a security breach orchestrated through a sophisticated attack on
one of our servers via an existing user account. We became aware of the
situation a short time later and immediately took the site down. As a result of
this breach, all user permissions were reset, making all profiles visible to
all users. This was the case for approximately 3 hours. During this time, users
who did not opt in for law enforcement matching were available for law
enforcement matching and, conversely, all law enforcement profiles were made
visible to GEDmatch users.
"This was the extent of the breach. No
user data was downloaded or compromised.
"We have reported the unauthorized
access to the appropriate authorities and continue to work toward identifying
the individuals responsible for this violation. Today, as we continued to investigate the
incident and work on a permanent solution to safeguard against threats of this
nature, we discovered that the site was still vulnerable and made the decision
to take the site down until such time that we can be absolutely sure that user
data is protected against potential attacks. We are working with a
cybersecurity firm to conduct a comprehensive forensic review and help us
implement the best possible security measures.
"This is clearly disappointing for our
company, as user privacy and data security are our top priorities. We apologize
to our GEDmatch users and our law enforcement customers for the concern and
frustration this situation has caused.
"Thank you for your continued support of
GEDmatch. If you have questions, please reach out to us at gedmatch@verogen.com.
We will update you as soon as we have more information to share."
Family
Tree Maker users' data compromised
GEDmatch
aren’t the only ones with red faces this week – it has been reported that the
details of around 60,000 Family Tree Maker users were left on an open server,
so could have been accessed by bad actors (but possibly weren't). You'll find
more details here,
and in this Ancestry blog post.
Review: The Nonconformist Revolution
Almost all of us have non-conformists in our trees, but
the reason why our ancestors chose to eschew the established church is often lost
in the mists of time. In The Nonconformist
Revolution: Religious Dissent, Innovation and Rebellion the author and
historian Amanda J Thomas looks at 800 years of religious disputes painting a
much more colourful and interesting picture than one might expect given the
scholarly title. It's perhaps not surprising that many
scientists and inventors questioned orthodox religious teachings, but the
extent to which non-conformists seeded and promoted the Industrial Revolution is
quite amazing.
But
the foundations of this revolution were laid centuries earlier. I was surprised
to discover the connection to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, and even more
surprised to discover that this rebellion began in Brentwood, Essex – the town
where I went to school for most of the 1960s. I knew that 170 years later, during
the reign of Queen Mary, a young man named William Hunter had been burnt at the
stake for his beliefs, and that the local magistrate who sent him to London for
trial later established the school next to the site (some said as penance for
his role in Hunter's death, though Mary was still on the throne in 1557, when
the school was founded), but the connection to the events of 1381, and the fact
this failed revolution was as much about the Church as the State was news to
me.
In
short, this book isn’t so much about religion but
about history. It won't help you find records of your non-conformist ancestors,
but it will help you to understand the background to their decision – one which
at many points in history would have put them at a distinct disadvantage. It's very well-researched – at the back there are 70 pages devoted
to family trees, notes, an extensive bibliography, and a comprehensive index. A
topic that could be rather dry becomes much more interesting and more readily
understood when presented in an historical context, and that's
a credit to the author. There's so much in this book,
and yet just one sentence could light up a dark corner of your family tree.
I
read the hardback edition which has a cover price of £25, though Amazon in the
UK have set their selling price at £20, and there are some even cheaper offers
from third party sellers – but there's also a Kindle version, which is much
cheaper, and will suffice for many.
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca Amazon.com.au Wordery
Review: Ian Fleming's Inspiration: the
Truth Behind the Books
Nearly 60 years ago I
was introduced to the 007 novels by a family friend - I read them voraciously,
as I imagine any teenager would have done; James Bond may have been in a
similar job to James Bigglesworth,
but his drinking, womanising, and gambling set him apart from my childhood hero.
Strangely I wasn't a great fan of the early films, perhaps
because the characters didn't fit my mental image of them (and the storylines
were altered, though I now know that's par for the course).
I
was attracted to Edward Abel Smith's book by the sub-title, since James Bond's
adventures seem so far-fetched that they must surely be the product of a
fertile imagination. And yet, as the story of Ian Fleming's own life unfolded,
each chapter named after the book that the events inspired, I came to realise
that Ian Fleming was James Bond. Though Fleming was involved more in
planning operations than executing them, his sporting success at school was unprecedented
– indeed some of his achievements have yet to be equalled – and it was only his
deteriorating health that prevented him from taking a more active role during
WW2.
Fleming
was 9 years old when his father was killed in the Great War, his obituary in The
Times written by no less than Winston Churchill. His mother did her best to
give him a good start in life: his first attempt at a career was the Royal Military
College at Sandhurst, but after he contracted a social disease the British Army
decided he was not officer material; he then aimed for the Foreign Office, but
narrowly failed to make the shortlist; finally his mother used her contacts to secure him a
job as journalist with Reuters.
I
was genuinely surprised by the extent to which Fleming contributed to the
Security Services – indeed it wasn't only the British that he helped, for as
this article
on the CIA website confirms, he helped to create the organisation that ultimately
became the CIA. Who knows what he might have achieved had he not died so young –
he was just 56 when his heart gave way in 1964, and his first children's story
(Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang) didn’t appear in print until after his death.
All
in all, it's quite a page turner considering that's a
non-fiction work – this is partly down to the subject, but it's also a product
of the ingenious way the author tells the tale. I read the hardback edition,
priced at a hefty £19.99 (but available from Amazon in the UK for £14.99 or
less); it's the sort of book you might want to lend to friends, so it's worth
splashing out, but if you're buying solely for your personal enjoyment the
Kindle version is more competitively priced at £5.59
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca Amazon.com.au Wordery
If
you ordered a copy of Chris Paton's new book from Amazon in the UK after
reading my review
in the last issue – and I'm sure many of you did - it’s possible that you were overcharged
as a result of an error on Amazon's website (the correct UK RRP is £14.99). If you
were charged more than this I suggest you follow the
advice of LostCousins member Christine, who complained and got a credit.
Summer
has at last arrived in Stansted. I'm not talking about
the weather, but blackberries – it gives me great pleasure to be able to go out
and pick blackberries in the wild. Admittedly they're
not very big, but the smaller fruit have more flavour – at least, that's what I
tell myself! We're almost out of home-made jam, so the
timing is excellent, and I'm particularly looking forward to making more of
last year's favourite, which was Blackberry, Elderberry, Apple, Sultana and Cinnamon.
Note to self - remember to add jam sugar to the next supermarket order.
It's hard to believe that it's still only July -
this year seems to have lasted for ever. I suppose the fact that this is my
20th newsletter of the year might have something to do with it – it's the
equivalent of writing a couple of novels - but I suspect it's more to do with the
pandemic, which has changed our lives
and our expectations in so many ways. Do you remember how at the beginning of
April, when we were just starting to get used to our new way of living, I wrote
in this newsletter:
"Here in the UK the press are fixated
on the question of when the lockdown will finish so that life can get back to
normal. But realistically life isn’t likely to get
back to normal until either a reliable vaccine is approved and available in sufficiently
large quantities, or public opinion accepts that the death of several hundred
thousand British people is a price worth paying.
"I
guess your view on those options is going to depend whether you think you might
be one of unlucky ones - personally I'd prefer to wait
for the vaccine. In the meantime alternating short periods of lockdown (say 3
weeks at a time) with short periods when people can go to work, shop, and play
as normal would be one way to build resilience into the economy without throwing
the most vulnerable members of the population under the proverbial bus."
I don’t know whether someone at the World Health
Organisation is a reader of the newsletter, but I was interested to see this week
that the WHO have come up exactly the same idea (except that it involves a 4 week
cycle, 2 weeks of lockdown followed by 2 weeks of opening up). They're welcome to borrow my ideas – plenty more where that one
came from!
Finally, did you see the story of the 104 year-old who
recently recovered from COVID-19? There's hope for all of us! Though best not
to get it at all, methinks.
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......
That's all for now, but I'll be
back soon with more news, stories, tips, and articles. In the meantime, a
reminder that many of the questions you might have are answered by my
Masterclasses. If you’re a supporter of LostCousins you'll find links to all 9 of
the Masterclasses on the Subscribers Only page, but if not you can use the customised Google search at the top of any
newsletter. And remember to connect with your 'lost cousins' – they're smarter and more experienced than the people you'll
come across on other sites – and more polite too, a definite bonus!
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?