The British Newspaper Archive now has 22,673,989 pages (22,481,573 pages last month). The 16 (46) papers with new pages online this month, includes those listed as being posted on the 30th, are tabulated below with the major additions bolded.
| TITLE | DATE RANGE |
|---|---|
| Cambrian News | 1881-1883, 1885-1889, 1891-1896, 1898-1909 |
| Coventry Evening Telegraph | 1898, 1904, 1906, 1908-1913, 1919, 1926, 1928-1929, 1931, 1933-1934 |
| Daily Herald | 1938 |
| Hampshire Telegraph | 1914 |
| Irish News and Belfast Morning News | 1892 |
| Isle of Wight Times | 1862-1866, 1871, 1873-1874, 1876-1879, 1889, 1897, 1901-1913 |
| John Bull | 1833 |
| Leominster News and North West Herefordshire & Radnorshire Advertiser | 1884, 1886-1896, 1898-1910 |
| Melton Mowbray Mercury and Oakham and Uppingham News | 1881-1894, 1898-1900, 1904-1909, 1911, 1913-1915 |
| Pall Mall Gazette | 1922 |
| Ross Gazette | 1897, 1910 |
| Surrey Gazette | 1860-1865, 1867, 1871-1872, 1875, 1879 |
| The Graphic | 1869-1898, 1900-1901, 1903-1911, 1914-1932 |
| Todmorden Advertiser and Hebden Bridge Newsletter | 1862-1867, 1869, 1871, 1873-1876, 1878-1895, 1898-1910, 1913-1934 |
| Windsor and Eton Express | 1872-1875, 1877-1882, 1898-1902, 1904-1907 |
| Yarmouth Independent | 1897 |
TNA, the UK National Archives, jumping the gun a little with a report A Year in
Archives 2017, gives examples of progress during the year in the UK.
A blog post from SWilson.info shares how to browse images of the Civil Birth, Marriage and Death registers on the IrishGenealogy website. The tool adds a selection of next / previous links to make it easier to move backwards and forwards through the images without having to manually edit the URL. This can be useful to help locate mis-indexed entries, or records with missing index entries.
While at the site check out the other useful Irish resources linked.
In January I reported that "135 GB of digitized material including Home and County newsletters, original constitution, 3 published history books, 11 Tweedsmuir histories and more" had been digitized in a Women's Institute project funded by the Documentary Heritage Communities Program.
So far in November 22 new or updated collections have appeared on Ancestry. They came in a rush early in the month, the most recent, UK, Absent Voter Lists, 1918-1925, 1939, was posted on 8 November.
An unusually long quiet period can signal they're working on one or more major additions. Dare we expect some for Canada? I expect so.
The FreeBMD database was updated on Friday 24 November 2017 to contain 264,917,588 distinct records (264,343,835 at previous update).
Years with major updates (more than 5,000 entries) are: for births: 1963-64, 1966, 1977-1981; for marriages: 1965-66, 1969, 1977, 1979-80, 82-83; for deaths 1979-82.
Many families from Scottish parish of Balmaghie, Dumfries and Galloway, emigrated to Canada in the 19th century. They include Thomas McCrae & Jane Campbell, who married on 15 March 1842 in Balmaghie. They were the grandparents of John McCrae, writer of "In Flanders Fields."
Image browse files of Wales Probate Abstracts 1544-1858 are now on Findmypast for the Welsh dioceses of Bangor, Hawarden, Llandaff, St. Asaph's (which includes 11 parishes in Shropshire, England), and St. David's. The abstracts include testator’s name, residence, the date of the will and probate as well as the names and relationships of other family members.
Each of the 583 volumes is for a diocese and year or group of years. At the start of each is an index by place name and by given name. The names are not searchable. This collection includes images of transcripts from FamilySearch.
Also new this week are additions to England Roman Catholic Parish records for The Archdiocese of Westminster. Along with baptism, marriage and burial records there is a collection of anniversary books, confirmation lists, congregational lists, lists of benefactors and converts, parish diaries, and more under the title Congregational Records.
| New | Total | |
|---|---|---|
| Baptisims | 94,000 | 584,000 |
| Marriages | 13,000 | 110,000 |
| Burials | 9,600 | 51,000 |
| Congregational | 41,000 | 169,000 |
I'm looking forward to 16-17 February in Belfast and a (tentative) program of genetic genealogy presentations.
Prof Jim Mallory ... The Origins of the Irish
Ed Gilbert ... The Irish DNA Atlas Project - final results
Martin McDowell ... DNA & the North of Ireland Family History Society
Donna Rutherford ... DNA & Game of Thrones
Debbie Kennett ... Mysteries of the Titanic solved by DNA
Brad Larkin ... DNA, Clans, & Monarchy
Katherine Borges ... DNA testing for beginners
Linda Magellan ... Introduction to DNA Testing
John Cleary ... A Y-DNA Ulster family Case Study
James Irvine ... Y-DNA of a Scots-Irish diaspora
Michelle Leonard ... Using your autosomal DNA results
Maurice Gleeson ... Triangulating on a specific ancestor
Ask the Experts session ... 20 minutes at the end of each day.
Full details at
http://ggi2013.blogspot.ca/2017/11/ggi-belfast-our-first-event-for-2018.html
Earlier this week Blaine Bettinger posted a survey on Facebook asking how many 3rd cousin or closer matches you have on Ancestry DNA. More than 1,200 people responded. While the most frequent answer was 1 - 5 matches there was a wide distribution. Some had none, some had more than 100 matches.
A simple way of looking at what to expect is by analogy to the urn problem -- coloured balls in an urn are either one colour or another, say black or white. If you draw a certain number of balls how many of them are likely to be of each colour?
What you need to know is how many balls there are in the urn, how many are there of each colour and how many are drawn.
For the autosomal DNA matching you need to know how many there are in the population from which those who take the test are drawn, how many 3rd cousin or closer relatives you have, and how many tests there are in the company database. The more 3rd cousin or closer relatives you have, and the larger the company database the more likely you are to find a match.
The AncestryDNA test is sold in many countries, by far the largest proportion in the USA which has a population of 325 million. Ancestry advertize they have sold 6 million tests. Using those figures and either 100, 500 or 1,000 3rd cousin or closer relatives, the number will vary by family, the bar chart shows the probabilities of the test detecting the given number of 3rd cousin or closer relatives calculated using the binomial distribution.
The distribution found by Blaine Bettinger's survey combines respondents with different family sizes. Pedigree collapse and endogamy will make more distance cousins appear closer. Where people have deliberately tested known cousins (the equivalence of deliberately drawing the chosen colour ball from the urn) the number of matches will be greater.
Those of us without US ancestry are effectively drawing from a population with fewer or even no 3rd cousin or closer relatives. To increase the chances of finding a match remember to transfer your data to Family Tree DNA (another 10 per cent ot results), GEDmatch, MyHeritage, and especially for those of us with British ancestry LivingDNA when it become available.
The following is a news release from TheGenealogist.
TheGenealogist is releasing the first part of an exciting new record set; The Lloyd George Domesday Survey - a major new release that will find where an ancestor lived in 1910. This unique combination of maps and residential data, held by The National Archives, can precisely locate your ancestor’s house on large scale (5 feet to the mile) hand annotated maps of London that plots the exact property.
When deaths in England and Wales for the period December to March are compared to the average of deaths occurring in the preceding August to November and the following April to July an excess winter mortality is found. The first graph, from a release by the UK Office of National Statistics shows the trend in excess winter mortality since 1950.
Disease of the respiratory system, and secondarily the circulatory system are identified as the main causes of excess winter mortality.
The data used by the ONS isn't available further back, but statistics from FreeBMD can be used to show a longer term trend back to 1838. For each year I used the first quarter for the winter mortality and third for summer. Points are annual figures, the blue line the six year moving average and the red line the six year average for the period covered by the first graph.
The most notable feature is the higher mortality in the 20th century which persists even when the growth of population is factored in.
The main event for Ottawa Branch of OGS this Saturday, 25 November, 13:00 – 15:00, is a presentation My Ancestors Were All English “Ag Labs” - Or Were They?
Presenter Christine Jackson explores the origins of her maternal grandmother's Durrant/Dudman family by attacking her Sussex 17th century brick wall from both sides. If the connection across the brickwall is correct it means she has a 16 generation line back to her original immigrant to England. Much of the material is taken from Christine’s award-winning article in the 40th Anniversary Writing Competition of the U.K.-based Sussex Family History Group.
You can view transcripts of 836,206 records in the new/updated FamilySearch collection England, Hampshire Bishop's Transcripts 1680-1892.
To see images of the originals means going to a FHC or an affiliated library, or being a member of the LDS Church in which case you can see them at home.
There you can also browse through 70,735 images on 47 digital microfilms.
According to a 20 November UK Office of National Statistics publication Vital statistics: population and health reference tables in the UK a newborn baby boy could expect to live 79.2 years and a newborn baby girl 82.9 years. That's if mortality rates remain the same as they were in 2014 to 2016 throughout their lives.
The 2012/2014 statistics for Canada, the latest available, have life expectancy at birth as 79.7 years for men and 83.9 years for women. That's slightly longer than in the UK. Both countries show a narrowing gender gap for life expectancy.
Infant mortality in the UK was 3.9 deaths per 1,000 live births, unchanged since 2013, the lowest rate on record. That compares to 4.7 deaths per 1,000 live births in Canada in 2014, itself the lowest rate observed in Canadian history.
This suggests to me that when historical statistics are missing for Canada, or vice versa, those from the other are a reasonable approximation.
As of 7 pm on Monday, 20 November 384 responses to the online survey had been received. While a few more are trickling in they are unlikely to change the results in a significant way.
72.4 per cent of respondents were Ontario residents and 71.1 per cent OGS members.
In general are you in favour of greater online availability of Ontario records of genealogical interest?
YES - 99.2 per cent; MAYBE: 0.3 per cent; NO - 0.5 per cent
Do you favour the Ontario Genealogical Society advocating for online availability of Ontario materials of genealogical interest?
YES - 98.2 per cent; MAYBE - 0.8 percent; NO - 1 per cent
Specifically, do you favour Ontario probate indexes presently available on microfilm being made available online?
YES - 98.2 per cent; MAYBE - 1.6 percent; NO - 0 per cent
Specifically do you favour all Ontario probate documents presently available on microfilm being made available online?
YES - 94.5 per cent; MAYBE - 5 percent; NO - 0.2 per cent
Specifically, would you favour the Ontario Genealogical Society advocating for online availability of Ontario probate records now available on microfilm?
YES - 95.5 per cent; MAYBE - 3.4 percent; NO - 1 per cent
Would you accept Ontario probate indexes and documents being exclusively available online for a limited time, after which they would become freely available, through a commercial arrangement, such as with Ancestry, Findmypast or MyHeritage, in order to fund online availability and as long as the existing availability through microfilm was retained?
YES - 70.9 per cent; MAYBE - 21.7 percent; NO - 7.3 per cent
63 people left comments which are reproduced below with identifying information redacted in two cases.
Library and Archives Canada's recently issued Departmental Results Report for 2016-2017 shows a surprising decline in the number of images digitized. You have to read that report along with the one for the previous year to discover it.
Without in any way discounting the essential work of other aspects of LAC's operations, necessary for continuing service, the concentration in this post is the activity of Program 2.3: Access to documentary heritage in the Results Report which is of most immediate pertinence for the user community.
The report on Program 2.3 is in three sections: Description, Results and Results achieved.
Comparing the Description to the corresponding section in the 2015-2016 report shows, in addition to several minor edits, the additions highlighted in the two paragraphs reproduced below.
This program is designed to make Canada’s documentary heritage known and available to Canadians, to promote a better understanding of Canadian society.
It includes activities to digitize, describe, organize, index and interlink this documentary heritage, to facilitate access.
The final two paragraphs in the section are reversed from the previous year moving the section including the Documentary Heritage Communities Program ahead of that on Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act activities.
Over the years the Ottawa Stake Family History Centre acquired a collection of microfilms catalogued on a spreadsheet downloadable from www.ottawastakefhc.on.ca/.
As an experiment on plotting from locations in a spreadsheet this Google map plots the locations for which they hold microfilm of parish registers for various locations in England. Note there is no guarantee the list is up to date as some of the information on the website is outdated, such as "This is to help avoid ordering films from the Family History Library that are already here".
These days you should be able to get access to many such parish registers as online digital microfilms through the computers at Family History Centres and affiliated institutions.
Coal was and is dangerous. Was your family history changed by coal?
In Canada miners died in tragic numbers. Do you remember the 1992 Westray disaster? In the UK 160,000 people were killed or injured in mines and quarries between 1700 and 2000, mostly in the 20th century.
Even more people died, or had their lives cut short, living and breathing in an area where a lot of coal was burned for industry or for domestic heating.
There's good news from Statistics Canada, and not only because of a slight improvement in timeliness. On Thursday they released Deaths and causes of death, 2014 several months in advance of the previous schedule.
While Canada in 2014 saw slightly more male deaths (130,761) than female deaths (128,060) these numbers have been converging over the last three decades. There is a more rapid decline in male mortality than in female mortality since the late 1970s because women's and men's lifestyles have become increasingly similar.
The major new addition to Findmypast this week is
British Army, First World War Soldiers' Medical Records
with over 212,000 names from The National Archives' series, MH106, War Office: First World War Representative Medical Records of Servicemen.
Included are admissions and discharge records from hospitals, field ambulances, and casualty clearing stations together with records from Queen Alexandra's Military Hospital dating from 1910.
If you're looking for someone with a common name good luck. First names are not given, just initials. There are 646 people named J. Smith. Perhaps you can narrow down the possibilities from the index information that he was a gunner, service number 3611 serving with the Royal Field Artillery admitted in 1917 to the 14th Field Ambulance. Additional information in the attached image is that he was age 26 and had served 2-4/12 years and that, unlike most, no religion was given.
There are seven other military additions or updates to Findmypast this week.
British Armed Forces, First World War Widows' Pension Forms
Transcripts and images from The National Archives' series PIN 82, Ministry of Pensions: First World War Widows' Pensions Forms. The over 8,000 transcripts will reveal service number, regiment, cause and date of death, spouse's name, marriage year and children's names. Images may provide further details about your ancestor, such as their attestation year, rank and date and place of death. Some records will also note any awards or medals.
British Army, Royal Welch Fusiliers 1807-1948
More than 96,000 enlistment registers, transfer registers, discharge registers and casualty reports from 1830 to 1946 to uncover a detailed history of Royal Welsh Fusilier military service. Each result will include both a transcripts and an image of the original document.
Hampshire, Portsmouth Military Tribunals 1916-1919
From the Portsmouth History centre 14,141 records to find out about exemptions from military service through a military tribunal. Under the 1916 Military Service Act certain occupations were deemed exempt or essential to the war effort. Others could also seek exemption by applying to a tribunal for reasons such as illness, potential business damage, conscientious objection, or family hardship.
From the transcripts together with the linked image of the original record you will likely find birth year, marital status, the date of their tribunal hearing, the location, addresses, occupations, employers' details and decisions or recommendations made by the tribunal.
Military Historical Society Bulletins
More than 6,000 pages of fully searchable Military Historical Society Bulletins in pdf, from 1950 through to 2017, reveal historical facts about military events, background information about regimental uniforms, and regimental histories, images of soldiers, uniforms, and badges.
British Army, First World War Casualty Lists
Explore over 2,000 issues of the War Office Weekly Casualty List, a publication of the names of those who were reported as missing, taken prisoner of war, wounded, or killed in action, providing the individual's name, rank, regiment, and service number.
British Army Service Records.
Over 47,000 new records for the Scots Guards records are added to the collection of British Army Service records. The collection includes a myriad of Army forms including attestation papers, medical forms, discharge documents, pension claims, and proceedings of regimental boards.
Prisoners Of War 1715-1945
New records covering non-British Soldiers include the names of thousands of prisoners from nations around the world.
And the non-military addition this week is:
Middlesex, Harrow School Photographs Of Pupils & Masters 1869-1925
"If it's not on the internet it doesn't exist" is a quote that goes back at least ten years.
For some a reasonably diligent search ends if you can't find it online -- too obscure to warrant the effort to seek it out and the cost of travelling to view it. Those genealogical resources are and will remain in repository obscurity ... unless.
That came to mind in discussing Ontario probate records, a large collection underused. It's trapped on microfilm. For access you go to the Archives of Ontario (AO), or order microfilms to a local library. Some other archives hold copies of the microfilms for their locality. In any case it's a two step process.
"First, borrow and examine the INDEX microfilm in order to find an estate file number.
Second, borrow the correct ESTATE FILE microfilm that contains the will and other documentation that you are seeking."
If you're not near the AO the process can take weeks. If you've been doing genealogy for a while you'll remember that's the way it used to be with Ontario civil registration records before Ancestry entered the picture.
What about the unless? Suppose a credible organization lobbied for specific record sets to be made available online? Is that what you'd want? In Ontario the obvious organization for genealogy is the Ontario Genealogical Society.
I've shared these survey questions with OGS and they are interested to find out the community opinion. They tell me the survey will be mentioned in their Saturday OGS eWeekly Update which is free to anyone who subscribes whether or not you're an OGS member.
Please take the survey HERE. You may need a Google or Gmail account to do so.
The Kingston Branch will meet on Saturday, 18 November at 10 a.m. at the Kingston Seniors Centre, 56 Francis St. in Kingston.
Nancy Cutway will present her talk "In Remembrance: Vimy and Other European Memorials."
Visitors always welcome. Further details at www.ogs.on.ca/kingston
By way of advance notice, here are the monthly meeting presentations scheduled for January - May 2018.
January 20, 2018 -- SPECIAL--MEETING BEGINS AT 9:00 a.m.Marian Press has kindly offered to give TWO presentations: (1) Are You Really Finding It All When You Search?: Mining Databases For Every Nugget Of Information and (2) Putting Your Family Tree Online: Making Use of Modern Technology to Share What You Know.
February 17, 2018 -- Annual General Meeting and 45th Anniversary.
March 17, 2018 -- Dr. Bruce Elliott will speak on Ireland, Irish Immigration and Research in Canadian Records.
April 21, 2018 -- Kyla Ubbink will speak on Preservation of Documents and Photos.
May 19, 2018 -- James Brownell will speak on The Lost Villages and Genealogy Records.
"Ireland was England’s oldest colony, so many assume the records will be the same. They are not precisely because the two country’s histories and their relationship to each other were different. We all know about the terrible loss of Irish records, but there are great treasure troves of surviving records which don’t exist in England - records about war, rebellion, security and land control. So while there are great obstacles (record loss, language, differing histories), there is a great wealth of resources rarely accessed by genealogists. This talk will examine these differences in records and research techniques between Britain and Ireland, why Irish records were created, or destroyed, and how they can be used to unlock your past."The presentation started with an overview of Irish history and geography then moved on to the records and where they may be found online. The pace accelerated toward the end, you may want to pause the playback to note the web address unless you have a subscription giving access to a handout with clickable links.
