Canada's Anglo-Celtic Connections

31 July 2012

Amazing genetic genealogy success story

For the doubting Thomas types on the benefits of DNA testing, and those who like sharing in other's successes, here's an amazing instance, well told.
http://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/2012/07/29/blown-away-with-dna/

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Survey: LAC Flickr sets

Library and Archives Canada is continuing to post images from its archive on the social network site Flickr. On Monday 72 images with the set title Summer Sports and Leisure Activities was posted, see them at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lac-bac/sets/72157630331740280/

Now that LAC has posted quite a few of these theme sets please respond to the following poll.

New UK TV WDYTYA line-up

WDYTYA magazine has released the list of celebrities to be featured in the next BBC series, only two of whom I recognize. The list below is ordered by number of results returned for the name searched in Google Encrypted. In cases with duplicate names results returned are not representative of the celebrity's popularity (notarity?)
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Annie Lennox, Scottish singer-songwriter, member of the Eurythmics. Also political activist and philanthropist. (7,870,000 Google hits).
Patrick Stewart, multi-talented actor still best known as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation (5,110,000 Google hits).
John Barnes, Jamaican-born English former football player, manager and TV commentator. (2,430,000)
John Bishop, English comedian. (2,260,000)
Alex Kingston, known for her role in the NBC medical drama ER (1,690,000 Google hits)
Celia Imrie, actress on the stage, cinema and TV (857,000)
Hugh Dennis, English actor, comedian, writer, impressionist (385,000)
William Roache, best known for his role as Ken Barlow in the soap opera Coronation Street. (202,000).
Gregg Wallace, English writer, media (food) personality. (196,000)
Samantha Womack, best known for her role in the EastEnders soap opera. (160.000).

According to WDYTYA magazine the series is presently planned to commence on August 15.

30 July 2012

Book Review: The Genealogist's Internet, from an Irish perspective

In his weekly Irish Roots column for the Irish Times John Grenham comments favourably on the 5th edition of Peter Christian’s The Genealogist’s Internet mentioning the improved Irish coverage, and some sins of omission.
http://www.irishtimes.com/blogs/irishroots/2012/07/29/the-genealogists-internet/

New on the OGS blog

OGS is trying something new on their blog: Polls. They intend posting a new one each week. The first asks about the regions you are researching. With 31 votes recorded England is only a few percentage points behind Canada, with Scotland and Ireland a bit further behind. You can vote at http://www.ogs.on.ca/ogsblog/

The previous post on the blog, Periodicals: The United Kingdom: England, mentions those collected in the OGS library. It serves to point out the availability, but also reminds of the disproportionate benefit Toronto area members get from OGS membership. But maybe that's illusion; OGS could poll to find out just how many members use the library and those periodical subscriptions.

The last word on truth in genealogy

In Evidence Explained, page 22, Elizabeth Mills has a section on Truth. It reads in part:

"Historical truth is physically pliable. We begin every research project the with the vision of that part of truth awaiting us at the rainbow's end. When we reached that end we have only a mound of dough ... The principles covered in the rest of this chapter ... are designed to help history's truthseekers leaven, knead, and bake their dough into something that, one hopes, will resemble probability."

How to express that probability?

29 July 2012

Researching unusual names

An unusual name to research is a genealogist's blessing. What are the chances that more than one person by the name Audio Science Clayton, Fifi Trixibell Geldof, or Moon Unit Zappa has ever existed? Some parents give their creative genes free reign in choosing their child's name.

For more common names you need to add additional facts, such as birth date and place, parents names, religion and more to establish the person's identity uniquely. It's the establishment of the unique identity, not the rote accumulation of additional facts, that should be the driving force in deciding when you have enough information to proceed further along your research path.

Naturally, some of those facts will be found without much effort from your base source and provide clues in pushing research further back in time. Just use your judgement before going to expensive lengths to accumulate evidence which will in all likelihood be redundant when your time and money can and must be better spent.

FMP adds Devon marriage records

From findmypast.co.uk comes news of 150,388 newly online parish marriage records for Devon.

The records span the period 1837-2002 and include Church of England, Congregational, Methodist and Presbyterian marriages.

See a detailed list of the areas and churches these records cover (PDF).

The Devon Family History Society provided these records.

28 July 2012

BIFHSGO conference interview with Jane Buck

Jane Buck will be coming to the BIFHSGO conference in September giving two presentations on genetic genealogy. Learn about how Jane came to work for Family Tree DNA, and about the talks she'll be giving by clicking on the link:
http://www.bifhsgo.ca/cpage.php?pt=62

Ancestry adds Lancashire parish records

There are more than 2.8 million records for Lancashire births, baptisms, banns, marriages, deaths and burials in these indexed datasets linked to images of originals from the Lancashire Archives.

Of the four datasets the largest is Lancashire, England, Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812 with 931,033 entries. Earlier records are usually more difficult to read and contain less information, perhaps just a name and date in the case of a burial entry. There is a gradual increase in the number of entries, except for a decrease in the Commonwealth period, especially 1651 and 1652. 1655-1657 may have compensatory baptismal entries.

The second largest dataset is Lancashire, England, Births and Baptisms, 1813-1911

with 850,138 entries. Lancashire, England, Marriages and Banns, 1754-1936 has
645,187 entries and Lancashire, England, Deaths and Burials, 1813-1986,
441,009 entries.

You can search and view the indexed record and the image of the original and may browse the records by parish with division by year range.

This is a good candidate for periodic updating.

27 July 2012

TNA podcast: Charities and their records for family historians

Simon Fowler gave this presentation at The (UK) National Archives last month, and unfortunately the first part of the talk is not included, so the podcast starts abruptly. Prior to the introduction of the welfare state in 1948 charities were a significant part of the social safety net in the UK, in particular for the so-called "deserving poor." Others were left to the much despised Poor Law system.

The presentation gives a good idea of the scope of their activities detailing the types of charities that existed, endowed and subscription, and the areas in which they worked. Barnardo's and the Waifs and Strays are mentioned as examples of organizations that emigrated children to Canada and Australia.

Unless the records are still with the organization, as is the case with Barnardo's, they will normally be found at local or county record offices. That's if they still exist, many have not survived. A good starting point to find these records is the National Register of Archives.

More recent records are likely to be embargoed for privacy. Expect to find many more meeting minutes, accounts, and annual reports than detailed information on an individual beneficiaries, although you may find their name on an intake list.

Connect to the podcast at: http://media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php/charities-and-their-records-for-family-historians/

LAC adds WW1 era finding aids online

Each leads to multiple sub-series with lower level descriptors as illustrated to the left. Each one I looked at included the caution:

Warning: Descriptive record is in process. These materials may not yet be available for consultation.

With no descriptive record you have to guess as the content from the title. This is an example where the record should be more precisely described. Some files contain correspondence arranged chronologically, time-consuming to process. I'm told some contain alphabetically ordered records and it should be relatively easy to add the range of names contained in the file to the finding aid.

Genetic genealogy for felines

For genetic genealogist cat lovers the University of California at Davis, Veterinary Medicine, Veterinary Genetic Laboratory provides a service to trace the lineage of your feline.

According to the lab website "cat breeds were developed from random bred cats and most breeds are less than 100 years old. Random bred cats from around the world can be traced back to 8 geographic regions of origin: Western Europe, Egypt, East Mediterranean, Iran/Iraq, Arabian Sea, India, South Asia and East Asia. The Cat Ancestry test will determine if a cat descends from one or more of the 8 ancestral groups. Once the ancestral origin is determined, comparisons are done with 29 breeds of cats to determine if the cat has similarities to any of the reference breeds."

The Cat Ancestry test traces the lineage of your cat and provides results for common physical traits of coat color, fur length and type.

Pricing per test is USD 120 per cat.

No mention is made of any social networking aspect where your cat will be able to connect on Facebook or Twitter with genetic cousins.

More at: www.vgl.ucdavis.edu/services/cat/ancestry/index.php

26 July 2012

New records for Oldham on FMP

Findmypast.co.uk have published Oldham Employers' Roll of Honour 1914-1920 and Oldham Pals 1914-1920.

Oldham Employers' Roll of Honour 1914-1920 contains 1,900 men who had enlisted in His Majesty's Armed Forces and who were employed by companies in and around Oldham. Some rolls include full name details as well as rank, regimental number, regiment, battalion, company and even platoon and section. Other men are listed simply by last name and initial.

Oldham Pals 1914-1920 has 1,755 records of men, by platoon, who joined the 'Oldham Pals' battalion in WWI: the 24th (Service) Battalion, The Manchester Regiment. The information normally available is:

First names, rather than initials
Date the man arrived overseas
Details of subsequent transfers
Details of whether the man was killed in action or died of wounds
Details of awards

With many WW1 service files having been destroyed this type of records is especially valuable.

Genographic Project 2.0

There's a new opportunity opening up to get your feet wet in genetic genealogy, a development of one that's already done that for tens if not hundreds of thousands of family historians.

National Geographic announce the availability of Geno 2.0.

Whereas the original Genographic project conducted the most basic test on either the Y-chromosome (for men) or mitochondrial DNA (for women) the new test will look at as many as 150,000 selected locations across the DNA spectrum.

You can read the details at the Your Genetic Genealogist blog.

As with the previous Genographic project, this is being conducted in collaboration with Family Tree DNA. I've been expecting some initiative from them -- it's been a while since the company, the long-time leader in genetic genealogy, has announced anything new except sales.

The cost is $199.95; pre-orders are being accepted at http://goo.gl/NOQj7

LAC understates benefits

Measuring Our Value was an independent economic impact study commissioned by the British Library to look at the direct and indirect value of the Library to the UK economy. The direct value comes from those who use the BL products and
services directly; the indirect value from the wider UK population. See the examples in the summary of the BL study at http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/stratpolprog/increasingvalue/measuring.pdf

The result: the annual value of the BL was £363M of which £304M was indirect, only £59M was direct value.

The direct value was less than the total public funding of £83M, while the overall benefit to cost ratio was 4.4 to 1.

Library and Archives Canada marginalizes indirect benefit failing to acknowledge the indirect value of their services.

Instead LAC trumpets the number of hits it gets on its website and promotes the year over year increase. The relatively small and decreasing number of visitors to the physical site at 395 Wellington is cited to justify further curtailing onsite service. Yet its the onsite users who contribute, likely disproportionately, to the economic value of LAC services through the larger indirect benefits.

25 July 2012

FreeBMD July update

The FreeBMD Database was last updated on Tuesday 17 July 2012 and contains 218,542,758 distinct records (276,229,473 total records).

Major additions are: for births 1939-40, 1943-45, 1949, 1955-56, and 1958-63; for marriages 1952-55, 1957-58, 1960-62 and; for deaths 1953-56 and 1961-64.

Conference: The story of migration from, to and within the British Isles

Alec Tritton sent a notice of an interesting looking conference on migration, to, from and within the British Isles to be held in September 2013.

The conference is now open to presentation proposals; deadline for submissions the end of September 2012.

The event is being organized by The Halsted Trust and sponsored by findmypast.co.uk.

Super offer from Find My Past

Find My Past has jumped the pond landing in the US with an amazing pioneer offer, a 75% discount for the complete World Subscription to a limited number of early subscribers. If you've ever thought of a Find My Past subscription this is the one to grab while available. Check it out yourself at findmypast.com.

The press release is below, and in case you're wondering, I have no financial interest in this deal. I am a satisfied long-time FMP customer.

For Immediate Release
FINDMYPAST.COM LAUNCH OFFERS BIG BARGAIN ON GLOBAL RECORDS TO FIRST SUBSCRIBERS
“Pioneer Offer” Provides World Subscription at a 75 Percent Discount; $4.95 per Month Instead of $20.83 per Month
LOS ANGELES, July 24, 2012 - Findmypast.com, a British-owned family history website, is marking its launch into the U.S. genealogy market on July 24 by offering its first customers a world subscription at a 75 percent discount – just $4.95 per month. This introductory price point will give access to not just a wealth of US census and vital records but also a vast overseas collection. The latter includes almost 1,000 unique British, Irish and Australian record collections, some of which contain up to 30 million records in a single collection. Findmypast.com is offering a limited number of these introductory-rate subscriptions on a “first come, first served” basis.
“The genealogy community knows $4.95 per month for these records is a steal,” says Brian Speckart, marketing manager of North America for findmypast.com and brightsolid online publishing, its parent company. “We want those new to family history searching to understand the weight of this offer before it’s over.”

A 12-month World Subscription to findmypast.com will normally cost $20.83 per month or $249.95 year –but customers who are quick enough to secure the “Pioneer Offer” will get one for just $4.95 per month or $59.95 per year.

Findmypast.com is the new US addition to a global network of findmypast websites – it joins existing findmypast sites in the UK, Ireland and Australia. It has recruited a separate US team, based in a new office in Venice, California. It is also a participant in the 1940 US Census Community Project, which is currently
indexing the 1940 US Census, for viewing on findmypast.com.

For more information on other subscription and payment options, visit findmypast.com.

24 July 2012

Legacy Family Tree webinars this week.

They're one of the best bargains around in family history - free (with commercial!) webinars presented by the folks at the Millennia Corporation, makers of Legacy Family Tree.

On Wednesday, July 25 it's Tips for Taking the Flip-Pal mobile scanner to your Family Gatherings, presented by Gordon Nuttall and Thomas MacEntee. They're giving away a free Flip-Pal as a door prize.

On Friday, July 27 popular speaker Thomas MacEntee is back with The Genealogy Cloud: Which Online Storage Program Is Right For You?

Both start at 2pm EDT. Further information and register at http://news.legacyfamilytree.com/legacy_news/2012/07/two-free-webinars-this-week-flip-pal-mobile-scanner-and-thomas-macentees-the-genealogy-cloud.html