Family history delight

You've probably read about, if not experienced, companies that delight their customers by providing service beyond expectations. The first company I read it about was Nordstrom's, the US clothing retailer.

I felt the same way when I went to my mailbox and found the new, May-June 2010, issue of Family Chronicle. Tucked in the package was a CD. I'm accustomed to finding CDs attached to genealogy magazines from the UK, although it's not done as much as once upon a time. I think this is a first for Family Chronicle.

Family Tree Builder is the software on the CD. It's not a product I'd heard of before. There's a four page review in the magazine by Tony Bandy, one of Moorshead magazines' frequent contributors. While the review is quite favourable there's a big overhead in changing software, one I'm not ready to embark on now. I do appreciate having the option.

See a list of the other contents of this Family Chronicle issue at www.familychronicle.com/current3.htm. Elizabeth Lapointe's article Learning From Experience based on an interview with Glenn Wright was another delight in this issue.

Ancestry.com reports strong 1st quarter

Ancestry.com's 1st quarter report shows subscriber growth of 26% and total revenue increase of 21% year-over-year.

The company is anticipating revenue in the range of $275 to $280 million (increased from the previously expected range of $250 to $255 million) and ending subscribers in the range of 1,280,000 to 1,300,000 (increased from the previously expected range of 1,200,000 to 1,225,000).

In anticipation, these results were not released until after market close, the company stock closed at $9.53, up $1.53 (8.50%) for the day.

Read the 1st quarter report at http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Ancestrycom-Inc-Reports-pz-84437526.html?x=0&.v=1

Royal Marine Medal Roll 1914-1920 at Findmypast

The following is a press release from findmypast.co.uk

Leading UK family history website findmypast.co.uk has today expanded its collection of British military records with the release of the Royal Marine Medal Roll 1914-1920. The record set provides a listing of all Royal Marines who received medals for their service in World War 1, including those awarded the 1914 Star, the Clasp to the 1914 Star, the 1914-15 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.

Royal Marine Medal Roll 1914-1920

Containing records of over 75,000 Officers, NCOs and other ranks, the Royal Marine Medal Roll 1914-1920 comprises both transcripts and images of the original WW1 Campaign Medal Rolls for the Royal Marines. Aside from the medals awarded, the records detail the Marine’s name, rank, service branch, service number and also a description of where or to whom the medals were issued. In addition to this, many of the transcripts contain extra service details for the Royal Marine, often highlighting those that died of wounds or were killed in action during WW1. These details are available online for the very first time.

Debra Chatfield, Marketing Manager at findmypast.co.uk, said: “We are delighted to be able to add the Royal Marine Medal Roll 1914-1920 to the collection of World War 1 records available at the findmypast.co.uk website. These records are a fantastic new resource, allowing family historians to uncover many more details about the lives of ancestors who fought for their country.”

John Marshall, author of the Royal Marine Medal Roll database, said: “Today sees the first of any WW1 Naval Medal Rolls to be made available online, providing a complete listing of all Royal Marine Officers and men who served in the Great War. This database is dedicated to the memory of CH/19403 Private John (Jack) Clegg RMLI, 1^st Royal Marine Battalion, Royal Naval Division, who was “wounded and missing” at the Battle of the Ancre in 1916.”

Anglo-Celtic Roots gets further NGS recognition

Late word from BIFHSGO President Mary Anne Sharpe is that the BIFHSGO quarterly chronicle Anglo-Celtic Roots has been awarded first prize in the NGS Newsletter Competition in the category "Major Genelogical or Historical Society Newsletter".

This is the second year in a row that ACR has been so recognized and puts further feathers in the caps of editor Chris MacPhail and his fabulous ACR team! Chris travelled to Salt Lake City and the annual NGS conference to accept the award.

New Ancestry.com Wiki

The following is from a press release by Ancestry.com

"Ancestry.com also announced today the launch of its new Ancestry.com Wiki. This wiki will feature a living version of the company's two largest reference books, The Source: A Guidebook to American Genealogy and Red Book: American State, County and Town Sources. These books, which are exhaustive guides to American genealogy, will now be made available for the family history community to update, expand on and even add to, making it a go-to resource for guidance and information. The beta version of the Ancestry.com Wiki is available to the public for free at www.ancestry.com/wiki."

I wonder when we can expect to see Canadian and UK resources added.

Ten new web services impact family history's future

Another fact filled report from the Mormon Times on "new and surprising ways -- even confusing ways -- to access information are changing the way people do family history." This is a report on a presentation by Alan E. Mann at a session during BYU's Conference on Computerized Family History and Genealogy. Read it at http://mormontimes.com/mormon_living/family_history/?id=14573

Digitizing family history treasures

The Mormon Times has an article on digitizing old family photographs, video tapes, cassette tapes, 8mm films and letters. Based on a presentation by Linda Berg Sharp and Kathleen Lyon Webb at BYU's Conference on Computerized Family History and Genealogy held at Salt Lake City on April 26, the article has lots of practical advice. Read it at http://mormontimes.com/mormon_living/family_history/?id=14595

SMGF surpasses 100,000 DNA samples

The Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation (SMGF) today announced, in conjunction with the 2010 National Genealogical Society Family History Conference, that its genetic genealogy database has surpassed the landmark milestone of 100,000 DNA samples, linked with corresponding multi-generational genealogical family pedigrees. The world’s largest and most comprehensive collection of genetic and family history information, the database links the genetic samples of its participants to more than 8.6 million ancestors and living relatives.

Full press release at http://pymnts.com/sorenson-molecular-genealogy-foundations-genetic-genealogy-database-crosses-historic-milestone-with-100000-dna-samples-aided-by-multi-million-dollar-gift-from-founder-20100428005716

First look at Family Finder

The results of my autosomal DNA test with Family Tree DNA have now been posted.

In case you're not into genetic genealogy the bottom line is that I found no new close cousins, but some interesting hints at possible more distant relatives.

For those familiar with the way FTDNA results are presented, Family Finder results are posted on your myFTDNA results page in a section inserted above Y-DNA results. Under the heading Family Finder there are two subsections

* MATCHES: View your Family Finder Matches.
* CHROMOSOME BROWSER: View your Family Finder Matches and compare people at the Chromosomal level.

You can filter your MATCHES by a variety of criteria. The default is "close and immediate", which is up to 4th cousin. In my case there were none. However, there were 22 matches for "speculative" relatives, usually specified as fifth cousin or more distant. Occasionally the speculative category includes fourth cousins when particularly long matching DNA sequences are identified. For each match identified you see the person's name, a link to send an e-mail, the suggested relationship, relationship range, a figure for the amount of shared DNA given in centiMorgans, the longest single block of shared DNA also in centiMorgans, a button for you to assign the relationship, and a list of the surnames in the other person's family tree if they have supplied that information.

A centiMorgan, abbreviated cM, is a measurement of how likely an area of DNA is to recombine from one generation to the next. A single centiMorgan is considered equivalent to a 1% (1/100) chance that a segment of DNA will crossover or recombine within one generation.

Judging by a small sample of data from my test, 500 SNPs (the locations tested) is roughly equivalent to 2 cM. 500 SNP matching blocks are the smallest the company choses to report.

The maximum amount of DNA I shared was 51.50 cM with a single block of 9.19 cM.

The largest single block was 12.50 cM out of a total 31.60 cM for that person. Shortly after the results were posted I received an email from that person, a Canadian. We think we know the surname that connects us but donlt have a paper trail back far enough to establish the connection.

You can also filter by SURNAMES. I had a few variant, Reed and Ready for Reid matches.

CHROMOSOME BROWSER shows the exact chromosome blocks on which you match up to three specific people in both diagram and table form. I suspect this would be of greater interest if you have closer cousin matches than I enjoy at present.

If you're looking for more information on this Family Finder test a good next step would be reading the FAQ at www.familytreedna.com/faq/answers/17.aspx

FreeBMD April update

The FreeBMD Database was updated on Mon 26 Apr 2010 and currently contains 184,358,091 distinct records (235,423,862 total records).

Major additions for this update are: births - 445682 distinct records, mainly (1935-1948); marriages - 504422 (1938-1949), deaths - 522818 (1936-1943).

A glimmer of hope for the Irish genealogist

It's called Lord Viscount Morpeth’s Testimonial Roll. Dating from 1841 it's a giant paper scroll, over 400 metres in length, containing the names and addresses of an estimated 300,000 men from all over Ireland and from every level of Irish society.

Read the story of this newly discovered treasure at http://blogs.ancestry.com/uk/2010/04/26/is-this-the-worlds-longest-document/

Is LAC frozen in 2009?

In December 2009 LAC posted Pathfinder documents on its website. Billed as initial reports for eight research projects in development in the various sectors of the organization they were a small step in its modernization initiative.

At that time LAC announced it was "presently organizing a series of consultation sessions with key stakeholders and other interested parties."

It's now four months later and LAC have nothing to report. If "LAC is committed to open discussions and transparency", where's the beef? What's open about a request for comments where there is not at least an option to display those comments publicly?

At the same time while digitization is supposedly a key initiative for LAC precious little newly digitized content is appearing on the website.

It used to be that a Google search for "miserable failure" found George Bush as the first hit. A year into the term of the present Librarian and Archivist of Canada is that a distinction for which LAC is vying?

News of family history magazines

Late news from Ed Zapletal of Toronto-based Moorshead Magazines is that the decision has been made to end publication of Discovering Family History with the March/April 2010 issue. The announcement is that while Family Chronicle and Internet Genealogy remain strong and popular publications the increase in the value of the US dollar has hit the largely US-base of subscriptions. The company announces they will incorporate DFH "beginner" content into the other two magazines.

It will be a neat juggling act not to alienate the non-beginner subscribers in the process.

This announcement falls hard on the heels of the closure of Ancestry magazine in the US and Ancestors in the UK.

A new entry in the UK market, with the May issue now on newsstands, is Your Family History www.your-familyhistory.com/. From the stable of Wharncliffe Publishing, who were the publishers of Ancestors, it is produced without The National Archives as a partner.

There could be confusion in North America. Your Family History is the cover title here of another British publication, Your Family Tree, a change required here owing to a name conflict.

Genealogical Research in 2060

Dick Eastman lets his imagination run free.

http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2010/04/genealogy-research-in-the-year-2060.html

How long is a generation?

At Saturday's meeting on the Ottawa DNA and genealogy interest group we had some discussion of the length of a generation. It's a topic I covered in the early days of this blog at http://anglo-celtic-connections.blogspot.com/2006/04/timespan-for-generation.html.

I was surprised to learn from the discussion at the meeting that Family Tree DNA use 15-15 years, whereas a group member showed data suggesting 31-32 years. It was also suggested a shorter periods for a generation would be appropriate for earlier times and for working along the female line as women tend to be younger than their spouses.

There's an pertinent article in the now defunct Ancestry magazine at www.ancestry.com/learn/library/article.aspx?article=11152. It points out that a generation has been defined as the age of the parent on the birth of the first child.

For DNA studies you're interested in the span between ancestors along the line through which the specific DNA component was inherited. As its unlikely your inheritance will always be through the eldest child the generation span for DNA purposes will be longer than by the traditional first child definition.

For practical purposes 30 years, or 3 generations per century, are appealing numbers.

Where have all the databases gone?

No matter how awkward a website if you use it often enough you get to know your way around. That's been true with the old LAC website, and perhaps you're feeling lost with the change LAC implemented earlier in the week which I blogged at http://anglo-celtic-connections.blogspot.com/2010/04/lacs-new-look.html.

The change has made finding some resources easier. This address link from my front page to census records.

But others seem to be less available, or at least not where you may be used to finding them. If that's the case then from the main page click "Discover more...", then “Discover the Collection” and then "Databases". you'll find an alphabetical list from Aboriginal Documentary Heritage to Ward Chipman, Muster Master's Office (1777-1785).

You may have had a similar problem with databases at Ancestry.com. I thought I had a disappearing database problem at the site, but then learned how to use the card catalog and found it again.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a convention used by all database rich genealogical, and other, websites so we don't have to use a different approach at each site.

Thanks to Lesley Anderson for the tip and Old Census Scribe for pointing out a bad link.

Amazing DNA Day deal

A $499 autosomal DNA analysis from 23andMe for $99 is a really great deal! That's the complete genealogical and medical packages which gives you access to the raw data. Don't miss it. But it's a one day special, you must purchase today 23 April only. You have 12 months to use the kit. Go to www.23andme.com

Now ended.

UK party leaders' family histories

The following is a release from findmypast.co.uk

UK PARTY LEADERS' FAMILY HISTORIES REVEAL SECRETS...AND SIMILARITIES

* David Cameron revealed to be the eighth cousin of Boris Johnson
* Nick Clegg's great-great-aunt the 'Russian Mata Hari'
* Gordon Brown's Victorian secret

Leading UK family history website findmypast.co.uk has revealed today that Conservative leader David Cameron and Boris Johnson, the Tory Mayor of London are in fact eighth cousins. This and many more fascinating revelations have been uncovered - some for the first time - when leading UK family history website findmypast.co.uk looked into the politicians' backgrounds using family history records on the findmypast website and other public records.

The Tory and Labour party leaders are commonly thought to have wildly opposing backgrounds. Genealogical research however has found that the family histories of David Cameron and Gordon Brown are not so very different after all...


David Cameron - Blue blood, 'White Mischief' and Scottish lineage

David William Donald Cameron was born in 1966 in London to Ian Cameron and Mary Mount. The well-heeled Tory leader is a fifth cousin twice removed of the Queen and a seventh cousin of Princes William and Harry, and a descendant of William IV.

David's paternal great-great-great-grandmother, Lady Agnes Hay and her parents, the Earl and Countess of Erroll can be found in the 1841 census on findmypast.co.uk. The Countess is David's royal link - Lady Elizabeth FitzClarence, the illegitimate daughter of William IV. Through Elizabeth, he is also related to Josslyn Victor Hay, 22nd Earl of Errol whose dramatic murder in Kenya in 1941 was depicted in the film White Mischief.

However, perhaps the least known element of Cameron's background is that he is also a distant cousin of Boris Johnson, the Tory Mayor of London. Both descend from King George II (1683-1760) - albeit by illegitimate lines.

The Scottish Cameron side of the family has also not been commonly explored. While Gordon Brown's ancestors were farming in Fife in the early 1800s, the Camerons were also tilling the land around Inverness. William Cameron, David's great-great-great-grandfather was recorded in the 1851 census as a farmer at Upper Muckovy, just outside Inverness. William's son Ewen then went into finance, and beginning a tradition of financiers that continued until David Cameron entered politics.


Gordon Brown - Scottish farmers, and a family secret

The current Labour leader's background is well-known and often-discussed; he descends from a line of hard-working and upwardly mobile Scottish farmers and stonemasons. The prime minister was born James Gordon Brown in 1951 in Renfrewshire, the son of a Minister in the Church of Scotland, John Brown. Before that, the Browns were farmers in Fife for three traceable generations.

There is however a little-known family secret in Gordon Brown's family's past, discovered by extensive searches through online records. One of Brown's great-grandfathers was born illegitimate in the late 1840s as a result of a relationship between a farmer's teenage daughter and a man 20 years her senior - a doctor of medicine who became a wealthy GP.

Francis Troup Manson, a great-grandfather of Gordon Brown on his maternal line, was born illegitimate to Jessie Cruickshank, a farmer's daughter of about 16 years old. It is quite probable that the affair would have caused people to gossip in their small Highland village.

Gordon's paternal grandfather was called Ebenezer Brown and his parent's, Browns great-grandparents, John and Mary Brown are recorded in the 1891 Scottish census living at Brigghills Farm House in Auchterderran, where John was a farmer.


Nick Clegg - An intriguing multi-cultural family

Nicholas William Peter Clegg is the youngest of the three leaders and was born in 1967 at Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire to a Dutch mother and a half-English, half-Russian father. He speaks five languages and has by far the most cosmopolitan background of the three, with a Russian baroness as a grandmother and a Dutch mother who was once a Japanese prisoner of war in WWII. He is also currently married to a Spanish lawyer, which may explain his pro-European political stance.

Nick Clegg's paternal grandfather Hugh Clegg married a baroness who was the granddaughter of the Russian nobleman Ignaty Zakrevsky. This nobleman had a daughter called Maria Ignatievna Zakrevskaya, born in St Petersburg in 1891, and Nick Clegg's great-great-aunt. She became a countess through her first marriage and then a baroness through her second.

She was suspected of being a double agent, spying for both the Soviet Union and British Intelligence, leading to her being called the Russian Mata Hari. She was known to be a heavy drinker, and also had affairs with the writer H.G. Wells and the Russian literary giant, Maxim Gorky. She also wrote books and film scripts, including Three Sisters directed by Laurence Olivier in 1970.

Like both Brown and Cameron, Clegg also has a more ordinary side to his family tree. In his direct paternal line, his great-grandfather was a schoolteacher and clergyman from Leeds who married a master mariner's daughter from Hull called Gertrude. John Clegg ran schools in Suffolk and Huntingdonshire.

Nick's paternal great-great-grandparents, Simeon and Mary Clegg can also be found in the 1871 census. The couple were living at 3 Grange Street in Leeds and Simeon was employed as a Butcher.

WDYTYA: Susan Sarandon

Tonight at 8PM on NBC, and CITY TV in Canada, there's a new episode of the US version of Who Do You Think You Are?

The blurb is that "Susan had grown up feeling a strange connection to her 'colorful' grandmother and had always wanted to solve the mystery of her life. With some clever sleuthing, Susan traces Anita's roots to Italy where she tracks down the actual village in Tuscany that was home to Anita's father. With the help of her son, Susan turns gumshoe and uncovers Anita's obituary, revealing the shocking missing link."

Happy St George's Day

In celebration, Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No 1. How things have changed!