Newsletter – 2nd
August 2022
Researchers make their own luck
Save 20% on Findmypast.com.au subscriptions
Ancestry launch Chromosome Painter
Using settlement certificates in family history research
A technologically-challenged
grandmother writes….
Gene therapy that might
have saved the Romanovs
Somerton Man identified
after 74 years?
Review: Marriage Law for Genealogists
The LostCousins
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Researchers make their own luck
There’s
an old saying, often attributed to Gary Player – or fellow golfer Arnold Palmer
– though neither of them was the first to use it. There are several variations,
but they’re all on the same theme: “The more I practice the luckier I get.”
It’s
the same for researchers, from Archaeologists to Zoologists, and everyone in
between – including family historians. This recent blog
post by professional genealogist Clare Kirk is a wonderful example of what we
can achieve, if we only try – it’s an incredible story, and just what I’d expect
from a LostCousins member!
Save 20% on Findmypast.com.au
subscriptions
It’s
National Family History Month in Australia and New Zealand, so Findmypast are
marking the occasion with a discount on all of their subscriptions – though as
the discount only applies to the first payment, you’ll make by far the biggest saving
when you lock in the discount for a full year with a 12 month subscription.
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Note:
in the USA Family History Month is October, but that doesn’t necessarily mean
there will be an offer from Findmypast then (not least because Black Friday will
be just around the corner).
Ancestry launch Chromosome
Painter
Earlier
this year Ancestry announced their new SideViewTM technology, which
uses sophisticated algorithms to identify which parts of a user’s DNA came from
each parent – you can re-read my newsletter article here,
but it’s also worth taking a look at Ancestry’s press release, which you may not have seen
at the time.
For
me, the key sentence in that press release was this one: “SideView™
technology groups matches with a precision rate of 95% for 90% of AncestryDNA
customers thanks to the size and statistical power of the AncestryDNA match
network”
Those
95% and 90% figures look impressive, but when you start looking at individual
chromosomes a 5% error rate could mean that one or two chromosomes have been
allocated to the wrong parent – and whilst this may not be obvious in cases
where both parents have similar ancestry, in other circumstances it could cause
confusion. There’s also the possibility that you’re in the 10% minority for
whom the error rate is higher.
Ancestry
have now followed up with the release of their Chromosome Painter which, in
effect, shows the workings behind your ethnicity estimate. You can read about
this new feature on Ancestry’s Support page
– though the example shown there, and reproduced below, looks nothing like my
results, which are far less interesting!
Remember
that Ancestry don’t tell you which of your parents is Parent 1, and which
Parent 2 – that’s something you need to figure out based on your knowledge of
their ancestry.
If
you are fortunate enough to have been able to test one or both parents (as well
as yourself), I’d be interested to know what you make of the Chromosome
Painter, which you can access by going to the Ethnicity Inheritance
block in your DNA Story, then clicking View breakdown. But don’t
write to me, please instead post your comments on the LostCousins Forum in this
discussion.
If you have access to multiple test results note that you can only see this information
for your own test, and any other tests where you have been appointed Manager.
Tip:
you don’t need to be a member of the forum to see most of the information
posted there, but you do need to be a member if you want to post a contribution
of your own. Most of the people who read this newsletter have already been invited
to join the forum, or could easily qualify by adding a few more relatives to
their My Ancestors page (something that they probably ought to do anyway!). See
your My Summary page to find out whether you’ve already qualified, or how far
you’ve got to go – you need a Match Potential of 1 or more, and you can make up
the shortfall most quickly by entering relatives from the 1881 censuses.
In
the latest issue of The Journal of Legal History Professor Rebecca Probert
writes about ‘civil marriage’ in the context of the 1836 Marriage Act – you can
download the PDF here (it’s
one of several articles in the issue which are open access). If you haven’t yet
read Professor Probert’s latest book (see review below) it’ll underline just
how complex marriage law and marriage practice can be!
Note:
on the Subscribers Only page at the LostCousins site you’ll find a link to a talk
that Professor Probert gave to LostCousins members earlier this year.
Using settlement certificates
in family history research
I’m
delighted to be able to publish this article, by an expert in the field, on a valuable
resource that is all too often forgotten about….
Most
family historians are familiar with using census material, and many will have
visited a record office to look through parish registers of births, marriages
and deaths. A relative few however will have attempted to look at settlement
certificates. This is not really surprising, since they were not required of
all the population in the same way as registrations, their survival rate is
very patchy, and most are not available online at sites such as Ancestry or Findmypast.
Nonetheless,
such certificates can be very informative if you are able to track one down from
your family’s past. As with all sources though, care should be taken in
understanding what they are really telling you.
What were settlement
certificates?
Settlement
certificates became mandatory after 1697, when the Act for the Better Relief of the Poor laid down that a person
moving from one parish to another, if they were to be renting a property worth
less than £10 a year, had to have a certificate from their parish of origin
saying that they would pay for any relief the person may need if they fell on
hard times.
Note:
Many sources cite the 1662 Settlement Act as the introduction of settlement
certificates – this is erroneous. A form of settlement certificate grew up
after 1662, but these were technically bonds between one parish and another,
underwritten by local worthies normally to an amount of about £40.
Without
such a certificate a person could be moved on at the behest of the overseers
and magistrates of the destination parish. With it the person was safe unless
they claimed for relief.
At
the time of the passage of the Act, and for most of the following century, this
covered the majority of the population. You had to be quite comfortably wealthy
in order to avoid needing a certificate. Their use continued until they were
officially abolished in the 1865 Union
Chargeability Act, which made Unions, not parishes, responsible for raising
rates. In practice their use had started to fade long before this, and not many
collections go on much after 1834. Consequently their use covers about 150
years, and the record offices of the country contain tens of thousands of them.
The
problem is searching them. A lot of record offices have calendared their
settlement and removal certificates, and they are available on CD ROMs, which
themselves are indexed by name. Some record offices even have a name search
available on their catalogue, which will bring up the appropriate certificate.
If you have a family name associated with a particular county in the eighteenth
century, and can with reasonable certainty associate them with a parish or
borough (through registry material) you may well be in luck.
Supposing
you do manage to track down such a certificate from your family’s tree. What
can it tell you?
Most
settlement certificates look like this:
Figure
1:
Berkshire Record Office D/P 96/13 (used by kind permission of Berkshire Record
Office); this and many other interesting documents can be found on the CD ROM Berkshire
Overseers’ Papers compiled by Berkshire Family History Society and Berkshire
Record Society, and available from the Berkshire FHS shop.
It
gives you the name of the settler, normally a man, and usually the name of his
wife, and the names and ages of his children. It will be written by the
overseers of the poor in one parish to the overseers of the poor in another
parish. There will be a date, and sometimes a profession for the settler. There
is also a provision for a signature, but more often, especially early in the eighteenth
century, this is only a mark. They are proof of movement of this family from
one place to another.
One
significant misreading of settlement certificates is that they give the date of
a person’s migration from one parish to another. This is rarely the case.
What
the date on a settlement certificate actually does signify is still a matter
for debate, but most are in agreement that settlers did not habitually get a
certificate from their parish of origin as they left. Sometimes they did, and
this is often shown by an address to the destination parish such as “to whom it
may concern” or “the overseers of the parish of St. Mary’s or St. Andrews in
Anytown”. Most accept that certificates were sent for once a person had settled
in a parish; often if they got married in the destination parish. This was
because a parish might accept a single man looking for work without question,
but once he was likely to produce hungry offspring they wanted the insurance of
a host parish. If you are lucky you may
well find a settlement certificate around the date of your ancestor’s marriage.
Sometimes the certificates could be in response to the family falling on hard
times, often after the birth of yet another baby, a lot of certificates have
very new born babies on them. If they presented to the parish looking for
relief the likelihood is that the parish would examine them to establish where
they were settled, and then send to the overseers of that parish for a
certificate, and an agreement to pay up. If they didn’t they could be removed.
In
some parishes, like the ones I have studied in Reading, a bunch of certificates
were issued all in one go, around the same time that the poor rates start going
up. This is good housekeeping on the part of the parish in difficult times.
They are making sure they know who is going to pay for their settlers in the
event of the need for relief. It does not mean that the settlers have applied
for relief.
If
you do find a settlement certificate, then you could well be on threshold of a
treasury of information about your family. It is worth searching then under
“examinations” to find out if there is an examination associated with the
certificate. This could be in the parish of origin, but is most likely in the
host parish, and would have been carried out by the JPs. This will give a huge
amount of information, where the man has worked all his life, what he has been
paid, properties rented, all his marriages and relationships, apprenticeships,
parish positions, where he has paid rates, times in prison, in the armed forces
and any amount more. It may also be worth looking at “removals”, to see if the
unfortunate family were sent back to where they came from. The last source
associated with this is a possible appeal at the Quarter Sessions. If you find
a removal, then the chances are that the origin parish appealed, which means
there will be a case in the County Quarter Session minutes from around the time
of the removal.
Settlement
certificates are a real jewel if you can associate one with your family. Good
luck!
About
the author: Margaret Ounsley has an MSc from the University of Oxford in
English Local History and is currently studying for a PhD in Poor Law History
at the University of Reading. She has written several local history books on Coley,
her local area in Reading, including Coley
Talking: Realities of life in old Reading, published last year.
A
technologically-challenged grandmother writes….
Some
time ago Peter published a newsletter article which suggested that for some
people, using DNA seemed like cheating, a way to get around doing good
old-fashioned research. Well, it certainly isn’t cheating, it’s simply a method
of confirming unproven ancestry, or opening up hitherto unavailable avenues for
further research.
Take,
for example, my family tree with the delightfully common surname of WILLIAMS in
Devon/Cornwall. Not as difficult as in Wales perhaps, but there are still
thousands of them. Even with access to all the appropriate local parish
records, it is still a nightmare trying to determine which John Williams or
William Williams is the correct ancestor, when several possibilities present
themselves in a given location.
Post-1837,
marriage entries list fathers’ names and occupations, which narrows down the
choice considerably, and successive census records can assist in tracking the
family through the decades. Wills listing descendants are another great help,
where they exist, as are the GRO birth indexes which give mothers’ maiden
names, but when all the obvious avenues have been investigated and 3 or 4
possible candidates still exist, where do you turn?
For
me there was only one answer, DNA – it’s a way of engaging the help of cousins
without necessarily contacting them. All it takes is for some of your DNA matches
to have a tree, and sometimes even a very small tree is sufficient.
As
an example, I had a DNA match which was shared with my sister, a 1st cousin and
two 2nd cousins on my maternal grandmother’s side. My genetic cousin had kindly
provided basic information of his parents, who married in Devon in 1938, but not
much else. Nevertheless, using a combination of GRO indexes and information found
at Ancestry, FamilySearch, and Findmypast I was able to draw up a reliable tree
back to my match’s great-great
grandparents. The maternal line offered no obvious links, but the paternal
line soon threw up the WILLIAMS surname in the area of Devon where my own
WILLIAMS ancestors lived.
Through
a process of elimination I arrived at my cousin’s 3G grandfather John Williams,
a man who was already on my radar as one of three possible candidates for my
own 3G grandfather (though up to this point I had believed one of the other John
Williams to be a more plausible choice). Finding a DNA match who was a
descendant of this different John Williams prompted me to research his other
descendants and, as I did, numerous surnames I recognised as DNA matches in the
4th-6th cousin range began popping up, providing further evidence to support
the case for this man to be my great-great-great grandfather.
All
in all, it was a very worthwhile, if time-consuming, exercise – but knocking
down a longstanding ‘brick wall’ is rarely easy. DNA had not only pointed me in
the direction of the correct John Williams, but also encouraged me to research
his descendants – I eventually found a dozen of his descendants who were DNA
matches.
There
is a certain thrill when tracing the tree of a DNA match, and a name which
already exists in your own tree appears. It not only confirms that your own
research is in all probability correct, but may provide the information needed to
extend your own tree back another generation. Approaching a ‘brick wall’ from a
different angle is a great way to knock it down!
I
am most definitely a DNA convert, though I admit to having no success
whatsoever with FTDNA, the first company I tested with. All my breakthroughs
have been via Ancestry, so I can understand why Peter recommends their test.
Many
thanks to Chris for taking the time to tell us about her experiences.
This
BBC News article
about three women of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force who won the Military Medal
for their bravery during the Battle of Britain was, fittingly, published just
hours before the lionesses of the England women’s soccer team defeated Germany
in a hard fought battle which – rather like WW2 – went to extra time.
The
daughter of one of those three brave women told the BBC how her mother was embarrassed
by the award, and rarely mentioned it – and some people thought that only men should
be awarded the Military Medal. Yet she had signed up for duty in December 1939,
long before most men volunteered (or were conscripted).
On
Thursday last week a new exhibition opened at Biggin Hill Memorial Museum - you can find out more here.
Gene
therapy that might have saved the Romanovs
Haemophilia
B, the disease inadvertently passed by Queen Victoria to the Royal Houses of Europe
has been cured by gene therapy, according to this BBC News article – which reports findings
published in the New England Journal of Medicine. This page
on the website of the National Hemophilia Organisation in the US has an
interview with British historian Helen Rappaport in which she explains the
impact that haemophilia had on the Russian Royal Family.
I
was particularly interested to read that the Tsesarevich was prescribed aspirin
by his doctors – though it may have temporarily quelled the pain it would have
made the bleeding worse (my mother made the same mistake in 1973 when I was
suffering from gastroenteritis). Rasputin may not have been a monk, and may or may
not have been mad, but his involvement did at least stop the doctors giving young
Alexei Nikolaevich a drug that would make his condition worse.
Note:
there’s another gene therapy on the horizon – scientists hope to be able to
cure an inherited heart condition that can lead to sudden death in young
people. You can read more here.
Somerton Man identified after 74 years?
I’ve
written in the past about the riddle of the man found dead in 1948 on an Adelaide
beach – and now the university professor who has been working on the case for
decades has come up with a name, based on DNA taken from the victim’s hair. You
can read all about the latest developments in this CNN article,
but I have a feeling that this story is far from over….
Tying the Knot: The
Formation of Marriage 1836-2020 is the latest book from Professor Rebecca Probert,
whose first book (see next review) has become a must-have for serious
genealogists with ancestors from England or Wales. It focuses on the
circumstances that led up to the passing of the Marriage Act 1836, the problems
that the legislation solved, and the problems that it created – some of which affect
us even today.
An
academic book in the Cambridge Studies in English Legal History series, it has
a price to match – and sadly this may prevent many readers of this newsletter
from purchasing it. However if you want to better understand why your ancestors
married how they did and where they did, I would encourage you to order the
book from your local public library, because it turns out that a lot of the
assumptions that family historians typically make about marriage in the 19th
century are false, or only applied for part of the period. For example, at one
point it was possible to have a religious ceremony in a register office!
Described
by Chris Barton, Emeritus Professor of Family Law at Staffordshire University
as “the stand-out family lawyer of her generation”, Professor Probert was an
advisor to the Law Commission, whose recommendations for changes to marriage
law I mentioned
in the last issue. She’s also no stranger to LostCousins members – indeed, it
was in this newsletter that she first invited family historians to submit
examples from their own researches, and amongst the long list of contributors
in the preface there are numerous names that I recognise.
This
book isn’t light reading – the copious footnotes are testament to that – but
there are so many surprises en route that there won’t be any chance of
nodding off (as I so often did when studying at university half a century ago).
Buy it if you can, borrow it if you can’t!
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca Amazon.com.au
Review: Marriage
Law for Genealogists
When
I first reviewed Marriage Law for
Genealogists in 2012 I described it as "a phenomenal new book from
Professor Rebecca Probert of Warwick University, which proves that many of the
assumptions and assertions that have been made about marriage and related topics
such as illegitimacy are plain wrong!" (I went on to comment that even Ancestral
Trails, the book that taught me much of what I know about genealogy,
and which was written by a lawyer, isn't completely absolved of blame.)
Professor
Probert's book really was an eye-opener for me, as it must have been for
everyone who took my advice and bought it. For example, if you've ever wondered
about the status of clandestine marriages, then all will be revealed in the
book - it really is a goldmine of fascinating information! And whilst we all know
that divorce was rare until the 20th century, to discover that there were only
about 300 divorces up to 1857 (the first being in the 1660s) really puts it
into perspective.
Even
before reading the book I already knew that when my great-grandfather married
his sister-in-law in 1897 (after my great-grandmother died at the age of 36), he
was breaking the law – but it would be surprising if you don't have at least
one similar marriage in your tree. Indeed I found two more after reading the
book – so there are at least three in my tree, and that’s just on my mother’s
side! Key to understanding how
marriage law worked in practice is the difference between ‘void’ and ‘voidable’
– and knowing which defects really mattered. For example, if only one witness
signed the register was the marriage void, voidable, or valid? After reading
the book you’ll know the answers – but would your ancestors have known
at the time?
Despite
the title, Marriage Law for Genealogists
is not just about the letter of the law – Professor Probert carried out research
to establish how people behaved in practice. For example, if the bride and
groom gave the same address when they married did it mean they were co-habiting
prior to their marriage – or are there other possible explanations? Again, you
might be surprised by the answer.
This
is a book that every family historian who takes their research seriously should
keep on their bookshelves - so it's hardly any wonder that 10 years after its
original publication (a slightly revised edition was published in 2016) there
are no second-hand copies selling at bargain prices. Indeed, it's almost as
cheap to buy a new copy as a used one! This
is a book you’ll read and re-read.
At
£10, less than the price of a marriage certificate, it really is a must-have
purchase for anyone whose ancestors married in England or Wales – indeed, the only
book that comes anywhere near it is Professor Probert's follow-up, Divorced,
Bigamist, Bereaved which looks at how our ancestors' marriages ended.
As
usual, you can support LostCousins when you use the links below - even if you
end up buying something completely different.
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca Amazon.com.au
As
many of you will know, since the pandemic began I’ve foregone the pleasure of
shopping in favour of home deliveries (and the occasional click-and-collect, which
at our nearest Tesco supermarket takes place outdoors). But I still take
pleasure in checking the bills – it must be the accountant in me!
A
few months ago Tesco discontinued paper delivery notes in favour of emailed
receipts which, in theory, show each item in the order and the price paid
(though just to confuse things some savings are deducted above the line and
some below the line). However, when I order two of an item which is sold by weight
(for example, my most recent order included two packs of kippers priced at £1.12
and £1.38) only one of them shows on the receipt, though both are included in
the total at the bottom of the bill.
When
I pointed this out to a very helpful gentleman in Customer Services I was
surprised to learn that it hadn’t been reported by anyone else – I can only
guess that other customers are more likely to be bean eaters than bean
counters. Or perhaps they’re just more trusting than I am….
I
don’t mind occasionally going to collect my order, but I didn’t appreciate what
happened 5 weeks ago when a delivery I was expecting failed to show up. Having
waited for more than half an hour beyond the arranged delivery slot I phoned Customer
Services, who were at first as stumped as I was. Eventually they managed to get
through to someone at the store (which by this time was closed), only to
discover that I should have been notified that, due to a driver shortage, my
delivery had been switched to click-and-collect. Thankfully there was a member
of staff who could hand over the order, even though it was outside normal
hours, and on returning home I was mollified by the arrival of two separate emails
with £10 goodwill voucher codes.
All’s
Well That Ends Well – to quote Shakespeare – except that it turned into The Comedy
of Errors, because when I subsequently tried to use the ‘goodwill’ vouchers towards
future orders they weren’t accepted. It transpired that this problem was
something that my saviour in customer services was aware of, and he told me
that the technical team were working on it – though he suggested that I might
prefer to have a refund, as he didn’t know how long it would take, and wasn’t
sure that that the vouchers I had been issued with would ever work. I gratefully
accepted this suggestion!
But
these are all First World problems – and the almost total loss of our water
supply yesterday, resulting from a burst water main, made me realise how fortunate
we are to have fresh water on tap, something that most of our ancestors could
only have dreamt of.
Coincidentally
we had a plumber in yesterday afternoon to change some taps, service our boiler,
and carry out a few other repairs that had been patiently awaiting his arrival –
the lack of water did at least mean that he didn’t have to keep switching it
off at the mains! I gave him one of our masks to wear since he only had one of
those blue things that they hand out to people who turn up at the doctor’s
surgery without a face covering – I explained that several of our friends and
relatives had caught COVID for the first time during July, and we were
determined not to join them. It’s not so much the risk of dying from the
disease, which is lower with the Omicron variants, but the chance of developing
long COVID (which can affect anyone, even youngsters). I experienced something
similar after catching dengue fever in 2013: it was followed by two years of feeling
tired, and there are some (thankfully minor) symptoms that have never gone away
– so you can understand why I wouldn’t want to go through the same thing again.
The
masks my wife and I wear are available from Amazon in the UK (follow this link to see the full range); you can also
buy them direct from the manufacturer. Lateral flow kits are another key part
of the jigsaw, and we’ve managed to find a reasonably-priced source of the same
kits that we used to get free from the NHS, so we can be confident that they’ve
got all the right approvals – you’ll find them here.
Infections
are at last starting to fall in Britain, though with 1 in 20 of the population
infected it’s not a good time to cast caution to the winds. On the other hand,
winds are just what we need to disperse virus particles in the air – which is
why it is so much safer meeting people outdoors!
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 2022 Peter Calver
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