Newsletter - 20th September 2018
Findmypast add new offer OFFERS END SUNDAY
City of London Cemetery: follow-up
Getting more from your DNA results
FFHS 'Beyond the Census' LAST CHANCE
RQG Conference 'The Way Ahead: Future Challenges for
Genealogy'
Review: Why Will
No-one Publish My Novel?
The LostCousins newsletter is usually published
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click here;
to find earlier articles use the customised Google search below (it searches
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Findmypast add new offer OFFERS END SUNDAY
I knew that a lot of members
were disappointed that Findmypast's very generous discount
was only available to first-time subscribers, so I asked Findmypast
very nicely if it was possible to add a second offer for lapsed subscribers - and
they said "Yes", though it only applies to their top-level subscriptions.
Inevitably it's a lower
discount, but 10% is still better than nothing - and, so long as you read the
instructions carefully, you'll still qualify for a free LostCousins
subscription worth up to £12.50 when you purchase a Plus, Pro, Ultimate or World
subscription (which means your total savings could be as much as £28).
Remember that whilst the Pro,
Ultimate, and World subscriptions have different names, all offer access to all of Findmypast's historical records,
and all of their historic newspapers - so if you live in Australia or New
Zealand, buy a World subscription from the Australian site; if you live in the
US or Canada buy an Ultimate subscription from the US site.
And bear in mind that the
reduced price only applies to your initial payment, so it makes sense to buy
a12 month subscription and lock in the savings for an entire year rather than
for a single month (the quarterly subscriptions mentioned in my last newsletter
have disappeared - clearly it was an experiment).
Please use the relevant link
below so that you can support LostCousins at the same
time as securing your discount:
IF YOU ARE A LAPSED SUBSCRIBER (SAVE 10%)
IF YOU ARE A FIRST-TIME SUBSCRIBER (SAVE A MASSIVE
30%)
Note that LostCousins
can only benefit if your purchase is tracked as coming from one of those links.
If you haven't changed the default settings in your browser, haven't installed
any browser extensions, and don’t use an Internet security package that blocks
tracking it’ll be fine. If you’re not sure whether tracking is blocked in your
browser, here's what it should look like in Chrome and Edge:
In other words, the slider
should be in the Off position whichever browser you use. If you purchase a 12
month Plus, Pro, World, or Ultimate subscription please note the precise time
of your purchase because you'll need it to claim your bonus (see below).
Terms and conditions
Offer expires at midnight (BST) on Sunday 23 September
2018. This offer is only available to first-time subscribers. The discount can only
be used once per user and can only be redeemed using a valid credit/debit card.
After the initial discounted period, your subscription will automatically renew
at full price unless you switch off auto-renew on the 'My subscription' page
when logged into the site. Previously viewed records that are saved in 'My
records' are only accessible with a valid subscription.
Get a free LostCousins upgrade BONUS OFFER
If you support LostCousins by using one of my links to buy a 12 month Findmypast Plus, Pro,
World, or Ultimate subscription under the offer above I'll give you a free 12
month LostCousins subscription worth up to £12.50 on
top of the savings of up to £46.80 on your Findmypast
subscription - so you could save nearly £60 in all. Your LostCousins
subscription will be paid for by the commission we receive from Findmypast, so please make sure that tracking isn't
disabled in your browser, or by some other program on your computer (such as an
adblocking program, or Interrnet security program). If
we don’t receive any commission then I'm afraid you
won't qualify.
To claim your free
subscription please forward to me the email receipt from Findmypast,
ensuring that the time and date of your purchase is shown. If the email doesn’t
arrive you can send me a screenshot showing your purchase, but you must also
tell me the precise time of the purchase, ie to the
minute. My email address is shown in every email you receive from me, including
the one that told you about this newsletter.
Your subscription will start
from the day you buy your Findmypast subscription -
unless you already have a LostCousins subscription,
in which case I'll extend it by 6 months. The offer includes a joint
subscription where required, so if you're researching your partner's tree, now
is the time to open a LostCousins account for them, and link it to yours (by entering their membership
number on your My Details page). Note
that you can have two accounts at the same email address just so long as the
passwords are different - indeed it’s usually the best option.
City of London
Cemetery: follow-up
My article in the last issue
was updated very swiftly following an email from a senior developer at the
company which was responsible for putting the burial registers online - it
turned out there was an easier way of searching the records - and if only it
had been more obvious, or there had been some instructions we'd all have been
saved a lot of hassle! Anyway, the article was soon updated,
but it just goes to show how important it is to read the newsletter online,
rather than printing it out - as some still do.
Note: the address of the website which hosts the
registers has also changed, but the original address still works.
The developer wasn't able to tell me whether charging will be introduced
at a later stage, but I hope that if this does happen they'll index the records
by name to make searching easier. They’re in the process of digitising the cremation
registers, though I imagine that there were relatively few cremations prior to
1956 - you may recall that searches after 1956 are free, so long as the date of
death is known.
Many readers have already
found relatives amongst the 440,000 records that are online, but Gillian in
Australia has a completely different connection to the City of London Cemetery
- her great-great uncle married Leila the daughter of the first Superintendent,
John Chapple Stacey. Leila ended up taking over from her father having been
widowed when her husband committed suicide (you can see the report of the
inquest in the British Newspaper Archive or at Findmypast
- it was published in the Barking, East
Ham & Ilford Advertiser, Upton Park and Dagenham Gazette of 19th March
1892).
Gillian was also able to tell
me that the General Register of Private Graves, which records the purchases of
graves, is held at the London Metropolitan Archives under reference CLA/052.
Tip: some of you may have wondered what the difference is
between a 1st Class grave and 2nd Class grave - when I telephoned I was told
that 1st Class graves are in the front line, and 2nd class graves behind.
There's been a lot of
discussion recently on the Society of Genealogists mailing list about gravestone
inscriptions and as, John Hanson, a leading expert and speaker reminded me this
week, the fact that someone's name appears on a headstone doesn’t
necessarily mean they're buried there.
If you think about it, the
traditional wording used to be along the lines of "Here lies..." (or
"Hic jacet"), whereas in modern times the
inscription is more likely to begin "In loving memory of....."
- which really doesn't tell us anything about where that person's mortal
remains can be found (although sometimes there will be clues in the wording
that follows).
Occasionally an inscription
will provide clues as to where the remains of relatives will be found - for
example, the inscription on the headstone of my great-grandparents, John and
Rose Bright, at Manor Park Cemetery refers to 5 children who are buried
elsewhere in the same cemetery. They all died young, and none of them were
recorded on a census - other than in the statistics in the 1911 Census - so it
was only when the GRO's new birth indexes went online that I could be sure of
identifying them by name. Sadly, but not unexpectedly, when I found them in the
burial registers at DeceasedOnline I could see that they had been buried in
common graves, with other unrelated people from poor families who died around
the same time - so their graves would have had no memorial stones.
By the way, it's worth
pointing out that although the City of London Cemetery is in Manor Park, this
municipal cemetery is completely separate - and quite
distant - from the privately-run Manor Park Cemetery. Although my mother was
cremated at the City of London in 1976, almost all of
my other relatives whose graves I've located - from both sides of my family -
were buried in Manor Park Cemetery. Most recently I confirmed that my
great-great grandmother Louisa Harrison (née Noakes) was buried in a common
grave in 1909 - whilst I'd found her entry in the burial register some time
ago, she had been in Mile End Infirmary at the time of her death, so there was
insufficient information in the burial register to confirm her identity. It was
only when I purchased a PDF copy of her death register entry from the GRO that
I could be absolutely certain that it wasn't someone
else with the same common name.
Louisa Harrison's death was
registered by her daughter Charlotte, whose burial place I've yet to trace - and
as she lived until 1965 it's quite possible she was cremated. But another daughter,
Eliza Florence, predeceased her mother and was buried at Manor Park, also in a
common grave, in 1908.
Eliza had borne 4 children in
her short life - she was just 28 when she died - and her husband Walter Gibson
outlived her by 32 years. When Walter finally met his Maker
it was thanks to the Luftwaffe - he was one of the first victims of the Blitz,
dying on 9th September 1940 (according to the burial register). There's a story
in the family that he was killed by the first bomb to be dropped on London,
though the bombing had started in earnest on 7th September, so either he lay in
the ruins of his home for two days before his body could be recovered or
the family story has become slightly embellished over the years
(or a combination of the two).
Although burial registers
rarely give the cause of death, when you come across two or more people who
died during WW2 on the same day, and lived at the same address, it's very
likely that they were bomb victims. About half of the people buried at Manor
Park Cemetery on the same day as Walter Gibson seem to have been fellow victims
of the Blitz, and no doubt a similar pattern will be seen in the registers of
other London cemeteries.
Note: the Bomb
Sight website maps the bombs that were dropped on London between 7th
October 1940 and 6th June 1941 - I'm not sure why the first month of the Blitz
is excluded. But the records of the London Fire Brigade indicate that both
explosive and incendiary bombs landed on Sheridan Street, E1 (where Walter
Gibson lived) on the 7th September 1940, though they were by no means the first
bombs of the day. You can download a spreadsheet listing all of the incidents
from that day if you follow this link.
Armistice Day 1918 was when
the killing stopped - but many more people died in the flu pandemic that
followed, possibly between 50 and 100 million worldwide. It's estimated that a
quarter of the British population caught flu during the pandemic, and whilst the
death toll of 228,000 is lower than the number of lives lost during the war, it
compares with just 460 flu deaths in England & Wales in 2016.
An archive of 1700 letters
from survivors of the epidemic reveals what it was like at the time - see this article on the BBC
News site for more information.
In Britain we tend to think of
slavery as something that other nations did, but an amazing project at the
University of Glasgow offers extraordinary insight into slaves in 18th century Britain,
brought into sharp relief by advertisements in the press for the sale of
slaves, or seeking the capture of runaways. You can explore this often forgotten side of Britain's past here.
In Japan it's compulsory for
married couples to share a surname, and whilst it needn't be the husband's
surname, in 96% of cases it’s the woman who has to
change - according to an article in The
Economist (11th November 2017). A survey in Britain found that only 59% of young
women wanted to take their husband's name, but in the past the percentage was
much higher - my wife and I attended an event recently where we were the only
couple to have different surnames.
Japan is now an exception,
though it was only in 2005 that South Korea changed the rules. Perhaps more
surprisingly (or perhaps not) it was compulsory for married couples in Germany
to share the same surname until 1993 (see this report
from the Japan Times for more
background information).
Getting more from
your DNA results
If you've followed my advice
and tested with Ancestry DNA your results will already have been compared with
those of more than 10 million others who have tested, and you'll have a very
long list of genetic cousins - most people have more than I do, and I have over
15,000! You'll also have a set of ethnicity estimates that might or might not
accord with what you know - or think you know, about the origins of your ancestors.
But not everyone reads this
newsletter - there are only 65,000 LostCousins on my
mailing list - so inevitably there will be cousins of yours who have tested
with other providers. Indeed, all the tests I bought in the early years for
myself and my own cousins were with Family Tree DNA - it was only a couple of
years ago that Ancestry became the front-runners, a position they're unlikely
to lose given their status as the world's biggest genealogy company.
Fortunately it's possible to upload your raw DNA results to other
sites where they can be compared to others who tested with different providers.
For example, Family Tree DNA can accept uploads from several other providers,
and there are sites such as GEDmatch which don't sell
tests, but act as a 'meeting place' for cousins who have tested at various different sites (you could say that GEDmatch is the DNA equivalent of LostCousins).
Uploading your DNA to another
site might also provide you with another ethnicity estimate, one that you find more or less believable. On the whole I'm sceptical about
the value of ethnicity estimates, partly because the results are usually quite
broad-brush - though over on the LostCousins Forum
we're currently developing an innovative technique for analysing DNA matches at
Ancestry in a way that could provide meaningful clues
to the counties of origin of our English ancestors - though you'll need to be a
member of the forum to see what's going on. And if it works for English
ancestors, we might be able to extend the technique to other countries.
If you live in Canada you can
make a big saving on Ancestry DNA tests - they're reduced in price for just 2
days, from 6pm (ET) on Friday 21st September, until midnight (ET) on Sunday.
Please use this link
so that LostCousins can benefit.
Note: if I hear of any other offers during the currency
of this newsletter I'll update this article.
FFHS 'Beyond the
Census' LAST CHANCE
There's a one-day conference
organised by the Federation of Family History Societies in London on Saturday
29th September - but tickets have almost sold out (which isn't surprising at
the modest cost of £19.50). If you’d like to attend follow this link
to the booking page - but do it quickly!
RQG Conference 'The
Way Ahead: Future Challenges for Genealogy'
Although I won't be able to
attend the FFHS conference, I will be at the Register of Qualified Genealogists
in York 3 weeks later, on Saturday 20th October. I'm not a professional
genealogist, let alone a qualified one, but there are some good speakers and
interesting topics - and equally importantly it's being held at the National
Railway Museum, so there will be plenty for my wife to look at while I'm
working (she has a business meeting of her own in York, by the way - she's not
just coming along for the ride).
If you'll be attending the
RQG Conference let me know - it will be good to say hello. There were still
tickets available last time I checked - for more details follow this link.
Review: Why Will No-one Publish My Novel?
For every published author there are 10 whose books
don’t get into print, and 100 more who never even finish their masterwork. Fay
Weldon is highly successful novelist, with dozens of published works on her CV,
most famously The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, which
I saw as a TV series (starring Patricia Hodge and Denis Waterman), but was also
turned into a film. However, when I read her Wikipedia entry I was even more
impressed by the fact that she wrote the very first episode of Upstairs Downstairs.
This week I had the pleasure
of meeting Fay Weldon - who will be 87 on Saturday - at a literary lunch, and she
kindly signed my copy of her latest book, Why
Will No-one Publish My Novel? (sub-titled 'A Handbook For
The Rejected Writer'). It's not a big book, nor a long book - but it’s packed
with sensible advice, the sort of things that might seem obvious when you read
them as a disinterested bystander, but can be quite
counter-intuitive when you're the author trying to get your book published.
Of course, it's not just
about how to get your book published, but also how to write a book that people
are going to want to publish. I was going to say "a book that people are
going to want to read" but, of course, it's so easy to fool ourselves that
people would rush to buy our book..... if only someone would publish it.
Although she's writing about fiction,
I think there are also lessons for those of us who write about our ancestors,
particularly if we want the book to be read by anyone other than members of our
own family. Let's face it, most family historians are far more interested in
their own family history than anyone else's, and if you can't persuade fellow
family historians to buy your book, who on earth IS going to buy it?
I bought the hardback as it
was only slightly more expensive than the Kindle version, at least in the UK -
and whilst there's a paperback edition due next year it’s not going to be any
cheaper. Have I been inspired to write a novel of my own? Maybe, but I'd much
rather that YOU did it - there are many talented writers who read this
newsletter, and perhaps you could be one of them!
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca
Also speaking at this week's
literary lunch was Tony Adams, the former England and Arsenal captain. I wasn't
intending to buy his book (I've always
supported a somewhat less successful London club), but I found his talk so
inspirational that I felt it was the least I could do, especially since he was
born just down the road from me in Romford. The gentleman in front of me wanted
a 'selfie' with his hero, so I decided to do the same - only to find that all I
could get on the screen of my smartphone was a blurry image of two grey figures.
I've not been very luck with celebrity selfies - when the Bishop of Norwich
consented to be photographed with me after the annual service at St Benet's
Abbey a couple of years ago, my phone decided to run out of power.
The real highlight of
Tuesday's lunch was sitting almost opposite Joe, who lives in Canada most of
the year - and turned out to be a LostCousins member.
In fact it’s almost impossible to go anywhere without
running into readers of this newsletter - I just hope they're not too
disappointed when they meet the author!
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......
Peter Calver
Founder,
LostCousins
© Copyright 2018
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?