Newsletter – 20th
January 2023
Surprise January sale – but only at Findmypast.co.uk
ENDS 31ST JAN
Want to know more about DNA? 25TH JAN
North Yorkshire parish registers available at
Ancestry
Sussex electoral registers now online
Wives left behind by emigrating Cornish miners
The sad story of Edith Jessie Thompson FREE ONLINE
Over 700,000 pages added to the British Newspaper Archive
this week
Last chance to win one of 500 prizes in my
competition! ENDS 31ST JAN
Will your landline disappear in 2025?
The LostCousins
newsletter is usually published 2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue
(dated 13th January) 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!
Surprise January sale – but only at Findmypast.co.uk ENDS 31ST
JAN
Findmypast’s
very first discount offer on Premium subscriptions had only just come to an end
when they surprised everyone, including me, by launching another offer – though
only at their UK site*.
This
offer is even more than the previous one – you can save a generous 30%. But it only
applies to Plus and Pro subscriptions – Premium subscriptions are excluded. (On
the other hand, once you have purchased a Pro subscription you may be
able to upgrade to Premium – but it’s not something I’m able to test myself as
I already have a Premium subscription.)
*although the offer only applies to subscriptions purchased
at the UK site, it doesn’t matter where you live
Plus subscriptions include all of Findmypast’s
records for Britain and Ireland with the exception of the 1921 Census; Pro
subscriptions include records from other parts of the world, as well as the
British Newspaper Archive.
This
offer isn’t exclusive to LostCousins – you may even receive an email from Findmypast
themselves. But you’ll only be supporting LostCousins when you subscribe using
the link below (remember, it’s only because of the commission we receive from
the big genealogy sites that LostCousins subscriptions have remained at £10 for
the past 18 years – for comparison the basic State Pension in the UK almost
doubled between April 2005 and April 2023).
Findmypast.co.uk
– SAVE 30% on PRO and PLUS subscriptions ENDS 31ST JANUARY
Tip:
the discount applies only to your first payment, so it’s worth raiding the piggy
bank and going for a 12 month subscription if you
possibly can. For example, even under the offer a quarterly Plus subscription
would have cost you £99.87 after 9 months, whereas if you shell out now you could
have 12 months for £90.99! In addition, with a 12 month
subscription you also qualify for Loyalty Discount – currently 15% – if you choose
to renew at the end of the year.
At
6pm (London time) on Wednesday 25th January I’m going to give a Zoom
presentation on DNA, which will be of particular interest to those who are
still struggling to understand how and why DNA can help genealogists. There
will be opportunities to ask questions of a general nature – it’s not practical
or advisable to discuss specific DNA matches in front of an audience.
Invitations
will be issued to entrants in my competition – make sure you have indicated
your interest in attending on your My Prizes page at the LostCousins site
(and be sure to click Update, near the bottom of the page, so that any
changes you have made are recorded). There is a limit of 100 attendees, including
me, so if more than 99 competition entrants express an interest the places will
go to those who have made the most entries.
Remember
that to enter my competition all you need do is add to your My Ancestors
page relatives who were recorded on any of the censuses that we use at
LostCousins. Relatives from the 1881 Census will count double, as this is the
census most likely to connect you to your ‘lost cousins’.
There
two Ancestry DNA tests that you can win in my competition: a UK test that I am
donating, and a US test generously donated by Terri. It’s very likely that the
winners of those tests will be amongst the audience next Wednesday!
Note:
the competition will continue until 31st January, but to have a
chance of being invited to my DNA presentation you’ll need to enter before the
invitations are sent out on Monday 23rd January.
North Yorkshire parish registers available at Ancestry
Ancestry
have added over 5 million parish records from the North Riding of Yorkshire,
and the registers I’ve looked at so far were scanned in colour, which makes them
easier to decipher.
North
Yorkshire, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages
and Burials, 1558-1812
North
Yorkshire, England, Church of England Marriages and
Banns, 1754-1937
North
Yorkshire, England, Church of England Births and Baptisms, 1813-1921
North
Yorkshire, England, Church of England Deaths and
Burials, 1813-1995
Sussex electoral registers now online
Ancestry
have also added electoral registers for East and West Sussex. I was able to
find several of my Lemmon relatives, though I’ve not yet been able to establish
whether the wonderfully-named Orange Lemmon is related
to me (I rather hope so!).
East
Sussex, England, Electoral Registers, 1705-1963
West
Sussex, England, Electoral Registers, 1832-1963
Wives left behind by emigrating Cornish miners
It
has recently been announced that Dr Lesley Trotter, author of The Married Widows of Cornwall: The story of the
wives 'left behind' by emigration will be one of the speakers at this years AGRA
Conference, which is being held at Downing College, Cambridge.
In
my own tree there are several examples of the head of the family emigrating in
advance, but in each case he was followed by the
mother and children within a year or two. I’d previously only considered the
possibility that mariners and convicts would choose a life in the New World without
their families – and the only relative of mine to be transported was unmarried
at the time.
On
Saturday 28th January, at 4pm (London time) there will be an
opportunity to hear from the founders of the website A Few Forgotten Women
– but to have a chance of attending this free online event you’ll need to be an
entrant in my competition, and to have indicated your interest on your My
Prizes page. I’ll be sending out the invitations on Tuesday 24th
January, so get those entries in now!!!!
The sad story of Edith Jessie Thompson FREE ONLINE
If
you have been following the story of Edith Thompson, who was hanged in 100
years ago this month for her alleged complicity in the murder of her husband
Percy, you might be interested to know that Professor René Weis – who has been campaigning
for Edith to be pardoned – has published an updated version of his book on the
case, which you can read free of charge here.
Interestingly
he doesn’t put much store by the medical assessment of Percy by the army
doctors who recommended his discharge from the army:
© Crown Copyright Image reproduced by courtesy of The National
Archives, London, England and by permission of Ancestry
I’m
not medically-qualified, so I don’t know whether he could have hoodwinked the
doctors – but I’m sure there are some of you reading this who are better-placed
to comment.
Over
700,000 pages added to the British Newspaper Archive this week
When
Findmypast and the British Library agreed to create the British Newspaper
Archive, the original objective was to add 40 million pages over 10 years, around
670,000 every 2 months.
Recently
the pace of additions has increased, and an amazing 706,009 pages have been
added this week alone, including 11 new titles. One of the new titles is Thomson’s
Weekly News, which came into the ownership of W & DC Thomson in 1886. DC
Thomson is, of course, the Scottish company that owns Findmypast – you can read
about the Weekly News here.
Last chance to win one of 500 prizes in my
competition! ENDS 31ST JAN
There
are hundreds of prizes on offer in my competition, including invitations to exclusive
online talks, valuable subscriptions, free DNA tests, a chance to make a
personal appeal for help, as well as an invaluable opportunity to knock down
one of your ‘brick walls’.
When
I checked this afternoon there were 840 entrants competing for 500 prizes –
pretty good odds, don’t you think?
But
you won’t win anything unless you:
(1)
Add
at least one blood relative or direct ancestor to your My Ancestors page
AND
(2)
Indicate
on your My Prizes which of the many prizes are of most interest to you
The
more relatives you add between now and the end of January, the better your chances
of winning and the greater the chance that you’ll win your most coveted prize.
You might even win more than one prize! (Quite a few people did last year.)
Remember,
the aim of LostCousins is to connect experiences family historians who are
researching YOUR ancestors – and every relative you add to your My Ancestors
page is a potential link to a cousin you’ve never heard of,
someone who shares your interest in family history, as well as your ancestry.
Don’t
worry if your own ancestors left Britain long before 1881 – the most important relatives
to enter are your cousins’ ancestors, not your own.
Here’s
a reminder of the prizes on offer this year:
The
TOP PRIZE this year has been generously donated by Findmypast – it’s a 12 month PREMIUM SUBSCRIPTION offering virtually unlimited access
to ALL of Findmypast’s billions of historical records from around the world
(including the 1921 England & Wales census), modern electoral registers for
the UK, and hundreds of millions of newspaper articles.
There
are lots more prizes to be won, including:
STAR
PRIZE – ONE TO ONE ‘BRICK WALLS’ SESSION WITH DR JANET FEW
Janet
Few is an experienced and qualified family, social, and community historian who
has spoken at many 
national and
international genealogical events. She is also a well-known author, several of
whose books have been reviewed in this very newsletter, including Putting
Your Ancestors in Their Place. A founder member of the Society for
One-Place Studies, and a former Chair and Vice-Chair of the organisation, she
is currently Chair of Devon Family History Society.
Whether
you win this prize or not you’ll find it worthwhile reading Janet’s excellent advice
on what to do before you ask for help – you’ll find it here.
STAR
PRIZE – WILL TRANSCRIPTION BY DAVE ANNAL
Wills are a wonderful
source of information, but few family historians have mastered both the handwriting
and the abbreviations.
I’m
delighted that professional genealogist Dave Annal, former Principal Family
History Specialist at The National Archives, and author of numerous books has
offered to transcribe up to 4 pages from 1 or 2 wills submitted by the
prize-winner (provided they are written in English rather than Latin).
Dave
Annal’s blog is a great source of tips, and if you haven’t read his June 2021
post Walls Come Tumbling Down I would thoroughly recommend it – you’ll
find the article here.
STAR
PRIZE – A CHANCE TO REACH OUT TO 70,000 FAMILY HISTORIANS
More
family historians read this newsletter than any other independent genealogy publication,
so just
imagine what might
happen if you were able to reach out to the readership!
Whether
you have an ancestor who disappeared off the face of the earth, someone you can’t
identify in a photograph, or any other family history-related mystery, if you’re
the prize-winner I’ll give you up to a page in the newsletter to explain the
problem and appeal for help solving it.
To
have a chance of winning any of these wonderful prizes, all you need to do is
enter my competition by adding relatives to your My Ancestors page, and indicate which prizes you are most interested in
on your My Prizes page. Forgotten how to log-in to your LostCousins account?
No problem, just click here and
enter your email address (as shown in the text of the email you received
telling you about this newsletter).
STAR
PRIZE – ANCESTRY DNA TEST (UK only)
There
can’t be many people reading this who haven’t tested their DNA, but what about
your cousins? One of the best ways to knock down a ‘brick wall’ using DNA is to
persuade a cousin who shares the same ‘brick wall’ to test. They don’t need to be
interested in family history – though they will need a free Ancestry account in order to register their test (they can then assign the management
of the test to you, as many of my own cousins have done).
I have a spare Ancestry
DNA kit which I will either post to the winner or the person they nominate –
but it must be a UK address, as this is a UK kit. As with all
of the other prizes, you can only win if you enter the competition (by
adding to your My Ancestors page) and indicating your interest in your My
Prizes page.
STAR
PRIZE – ANCESTRY DNA TEST (US only)
LostCousins
member Terri has generously donated this prize, which currently sells for $119 (it’s
the version with traits). It can be posted to the winner or the person they nominate
but it must be a US address.
Thanks
again to Terri for making this test available – what a wonderful gesture!
Other
prizes include opportunities to attend exclusive Zoom presentations, with
limited audiences so that everyone who wants to can ask a question (if you are
on the guest list you will also have the opportunity to
submit a question in advance, if you prefer).
SOURCING
WOMEN ANCESTORS with ELSE CHURCHILL – THE GENEALOGIST AT THE SOCIETY OF
GENEALOGISTS
The
Society of Genealogists (SoG) was founded in 1911, so
to be the genealogist at the Society is arguably the most 
prestigious position imaginable!
Else
Churchill is not only extremely knowledgeable, she is a
wonderful communicator – she spoke at
both of the Genealogy in the Sunshine conferences that I organised in
Portugal (in 2014 and 2015), and I was delighted when she accepted my invitation
to speak to LostCousins members via Zoom. DATE TO BE ARRANGED
MARRIAGE
LAW with PROFESSOR REBECCA PROBERT
The leading expert on
English marriage law and customs over the centuries, Professor Probert is the
author of numerous books – both academic textbooks and easily understood guides
for family historians like you and me.
Her
best known book is the ground-breaking Marriage Law for Genealogists
which debunked many of the myths that have seduced previous generations of
family historians – you can read my review here.
Professor
Probert will give a Zoom presentation followed by a Q&A session, but there
will also be the opportunity to submit questions in advance. The presentation
will commence at 10am (London time) on Saturday 11th February – put the
date in your diary now in case you’re one of the lucky ones!
WENDY
PERCIVAL – interview with the author of the Esme Quentin mysteries
What
I like most about genealogical mysteries is the continuity from one book in a
series to the next – I 
feel that with each
book I get to know a little bit more about the lead character. I can’t say that
I’ve ever identified with Esme Quentin, the hero of Wendy Percival’s highly-popular books, but she’s certainly a convincing amalgam
of some of the researchers I’ve come across since founding LostCousins back in 2004.
I’ll
be interviewing Wendy Percival via Zoom, asking questions that have intrigued me
– and hopefully some that have intrigued you. If you are fortunate enough to be
in the audience you’ll also have a chance to ask questions
– but please don’t expect Wendy to reveal very much about book 5 in the series,
you’ll have to wait until it is released!
The
interview will commence at 7pm (London time) on Monday 6th February –
so make a note on your 2023 calendar.
FORGOTTEN
WOMEN – panel discussion with the team behind ‘A FEW FORGOTTEN WOMEN’
It
might be a new site, but A Few Forgotten Women, which launched earlier
this month, was created by a team with a wealth of experience.
This
event will start with a discussion between the founders of the site, and then
we’ll open it up to the audience, for you to ask questions or tell us about the
women in your tree. It starts at 4pm
(London time) on Saturday 28th January, which is a few days before
the competition ends, and lucky winners of invites to this event will be chosen
notified around a week earlier – so it’s one more reason not to
leave things to the last moment.
This
month is the 40th anniversary of BBC Breakfast, the first breakfast
television programme in the UK. Had you tuned in 26 years ago you might have
seen me make a brief appearance – though it was nothing to do with genealogy.
These
days anyone can get on TV, but when I was a boy the height of my ambition was to
get the autograph of someone I knew from TV. That someone was the actor who
played Sgt Claude Snudge in The Army Game – which I could only watch if my
mother allowed me to stay up late (Dad always worked nights); Bill Fraser was
signing autographs at a local event in Ilford, where I lived. If I’d known at
the time that when he wasn’t acting he ran a sweet
shop in Ilford Lane, I might not have been so impressed – of course, these days
someone in his position wouldn’t run a sweet shop, they’d be on I’m a
Celebrity or some other unreality show.
I
don’t know what happened to my autograph book. Bill Fraser was the only person
of note to sign it, though these days I would value the signatures of my friends
far higher (even the one who wrote “By hook or by crook, I’ll be first in your
book”). Recently I bought the autograph of my 1st cousin twice
removed on eBay – it cost a pretty penny, not least because it came from a
seller in the US, but it’s something else I can pass on when the time comes.
Will your landline disappear in 2025?
If,
like me, you are a subscriber to The Oldie you may have been concerned to
read in Matthew Webster’s column that “BT is shutting down all landlines by
2025. So we’ll be stuck with indistinct mobiles that
cut out regularly, or simply don’t connect, or peering up someone’s nose on a
Zoom call.”
Thankfully
almost everything in those two sentences is wrong or misleading. There are
going to be changes, but they’re explained much more accurately in this guide
on the Age UK website. It’s also worth noting that the mobile phone network is
being continually upgraded, and for most people mobile phones work out cheaper
than landlines, as well as more convenient (because people can reach you on the
same number wherever you are).
I
mentioned last month that I was expecting my broadband connection to be
upgraded to full fibre on 19th December, just in time for Christmas.
Well, the engineer from Openreach came on the appointed day – and after calling
in a colleague with a cherry-picker we got connected to the fibre network. Or
so I thought….
The
only problem was that according to the engineer there was no ‘light’ – no signal
from the exchange. In short, our new fibre connection was as dead as a dodo.
Thankfully the engineer hadn’t disconnected our existing copper connection, and
he implied that one of his colleagues would be along the next day to find the
fault between us and the exchange – but 32 days later we’re still waiting for
the promised upgrade.
The
good news is that Vodafone (our broadband supplier) have signed up for a scheme
which provides automatic compensation of £5.25 per day for up to 60 days – which,
if goes to the wire, will be almost enough to pay for a year’s broadband. The
bad news is that if the fibre connection still isn’t working after 60 days,
there may be no pressure on anyone to sort it out – though on the other hand the
Openreach fibre-checker
still says that full-fibre is available at my address, so I remain hopeful. Thankfully
even the pitifully slow connection we have at the moment
is good enough for Zoom, so I’ll be giving my talk on Wednesday (see above) come
what may.
I
also wrote
last month about the problems I was having getting a refund from Asda for the 2
panettones (out of 4 ordered) that I never received. The panettones I did
receive were far from fruitless, but my phone calls to Asda customer services certainly
were (even when I could understand what they were saying, which wasn’t often).
I
was eventually asked (I think) to return the incorrect items when my next
delivery came, so I did. There were also mistakes in that delivery, which I did
manage to sort out after just one phone call, but I’m still waiting for the £15
I’m owed for those missing panettones – after 53 days! Ironically the only
reason I ordered from Asda at all was because their panettone was highly-rated in one of the pre-Christmas reviews…. I’ll know
better next time.
On
the subject of food, it was announced this
week that takeaways will no longer be able to use single-use plastic packaging
or cutlery. In my day fish and chips were wrapped in newspaper, and we ate them
with our fingers, and as for the kebab shop owner who claims he can’t manage without
plastic packing, isn’t that why pitta bread was invented?
I
also discovered this week that artisan cheese manufacturers in the UK can’t currently
use raw milk to make their products because a microbial test that became
compulsory last summer isn’t available in the UK – which considering we produce
more types of cheese in the UK than they do in France (or just about anywhere
else) is pretty amazing. I’m all for food safety but,
I have to ask, are we shooting ourselves in the hoof?
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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