29th October 2026 LostCousins Newsletter

Newsletter Edition – 29th October 2026

The LostCousins newsletter will be published once or twice a month while we are in transition. Click here to view and search previous newsletters. (opens in a new tab) 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!

In this edition:

Welcome to our November 2026 Newsletter. This month we have more progress to report -including the launch of our new YouTube Channel with a special series of Peter's DNA Masterclasses on Thursday evenings (so get your popcorn ready!). There are some great savings from Findmypast, Ancestry and FamilyTreeDNA. And plenty of articles, family history news, and even a brief Gardener's Corner!

New Website Progress Update by Alexander

Another month passes and more progress is being made behind the scenes on the new website. We reached out to people who had recently logged in and were overwhelmed by the response asking for volunteers. Over 700 of you are willing to help test the new site which is amazing. We are awaiting the lawyer’s final dotting of i’s and crossing of t’s of the legal documents for the site’s new terms and conditions to bring the new site up to date in terms of what the data privacy laws demand. Once that is done will be able to let the volunteers start testing.

Most of the work so far has been in the behind the scenes stuff such as putting out new newsletters, migrating the data across and getting the login processes right. So, everything on the new website is still a "view-only" look at your data. One of the first things we added that members would notice was a new My Ancestors page; it includes new search and sorting facilities, as well as export to excel functions. One other addition to help visualise your ancestors is a new map function. It currently looks like this:

A map showing the distribution of Ancestors by County

I hope this gives a flavour of the new things you can expect to see once the site launches fully in 2027.

Quality Control: Did you make this mistake?

One of the interesting things about migrating the old site to a new one has been the analysis of the data and in particular noting some bad habits some members have that will prevent them getting matches. These include things like adding little notes to an ancestor’s name like “(2g grandfather)” or using the same census reference for every entry they added. Even just simple typos in the census references will prevent a match.

It would be a good idea if you’ve not logged in for a while to revisit the the LostCousins.com website (opens in a new tab) and check your My Ancestors page – you will see a button next to your ancestors (it is a grey arrow just before the reference) that allows you to check most of the records online to see if the census reference is valid. Remember if you don’t enter what was on the census correctly you won't match with others. Whilst the vast majority of entries are good, correcting the kinds of mistakes we’re finding would give about 80 pairs of members a cousin they don’t know yet.

Whilst you are at it, please also take the time to check your My Details page. We are aware of several people who still have an old email address that no longer works as their login name. If you don’t fix this by the time the new site is launched, you will need to go through an account recovery process to change it to a valid email address before you can access it.

What’s new on the Forum, by Tim

We’ve made a few changes over at the Forum. If you haven’t logged in recently then please do, we’d love to hear your feedback.

Some of the changes so far include:
• Flags for Countries
• A Forum Map, to help find the forums that most interest you
• New structure for the Countries and their Resources
• Archived a few no longer required sections

And if you’re wondering what the Forum is all about and want to join, all you need to be is a Member of LostCousins and have entered some relatives and that qualifies you to join.

A snapshot showing part of the new Countries and their Resources structure with flags:

Part of the Forum Countries and Resources table, with Country flags

YouTube Channel: - Peter's DNA Masterclass Series premieres on 5th November!

Over the past few years Peter hosted or presented videos on topics related to Family History- from DNA, to marriage law, and interviews with Family History Societies discussing what unique resources they can offer. You can see the videos currently available to view on the LostCousins Official YouTube channel (opens in a new tab).

But we have something even more special for you: a 6 week series of Peter's DNA Masterclasses starting at 7pm UK time on 5th November! The full playlist is available here: Peter's DNA Masterclass Videos (opens in a new tab) . Join us for the Premier live at 7pm UK time - or watch later if you are attending a bonfire night event. Tell your friends and family too!

Do click the subscribe 👆button (it’s completely free) on the channel to be alerted when new videos become available; there are currently 33 videos ready to be released, and we plan to add more over time. Also, remember to like 👍the videos you watch and leave a comment. That all helps the channel grow and gets the videos seen by a fresh new audience who in turn can join the LostCousins site and add more ancestors leading to more matches.

The more subscribers (free), likes and comments the channel gets, the faster the channel will grow - so your help achieving that is much appreciated.

Exclusive Offer: Huge Savings on Findmypast Everything membership!

Findmypast have given us a VERY special discount of 30% in the UK and 50% in Ireland, Australia and the US, giving LostCousins members an Everything Subscription (with Unlimited Access) for LESS THAN their other subscriptions! To take advantage of this offer while it lasts, click on the correct link for your region below:

Remembrance offer for LostCousins members: 30% off Findmypast UK and 50% off Findmypast Ireland, Australia and US on a 12-month Everything subscription, until 16 November

50% off Findmypast US (opens in a new tab)

Ancestry DNA Offer: just £39 per kit (UK only)

Ancestry DNA kits are usually £79 each. Until 17th November, you can buy TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE and still have £1 to spare. A perfect opportunity to order some in before Christmas!

FamilyTreeDNA Offers: Family Finder only US$39, plus up to 50% off DNA tests (US only)

For our North American members, now is also a great time to order your DNA tests at a bargain price - but only until 11th November.

FamilyTreeDNA Early Bird Sale: Family Finder only $39 (was $79), with savings on Y-DNA and mtDNA tests too, until 11 November

Family Finder for $39 (was $79) (opens in a new tab) · up to 50% off FamilyTreeDNA tests (opens in a new tab)

The tale of a "Misplaced Cousin"

LostCousins member Ray wrote to me recently with a tale of having been matched to a Lost Cousin through our website; they corresponded over email for a while - but then his email address underwent an "enforced change" (the details of this were not provided!). The upshot was that he lost the email address for his Cousin, who then became Lost all over again. It was very fortunate that they reconnected sometime later through Ancestry's messaging service. The moral of this tale is to maintain a separate record of email addresses, so that in the event of a loss of access to your email system or if you need to set up a new account, you have a list to start again with. We go to enormous lengths to record all manner of details about our ancestors - please remember to pay similar attention to record keeping for your living friends and relatives- especially if you've searched for half a lifetime to find them!

David Priddis writes about his family's Birthday Book

Many thanks to David (Gloucestershire, UK) who provided this wonderful piece shortly after the publication of my Birthday Book article in last month's newsletter:

"I was very interested to see the article and the Cardiff University page concerning Birthday Books. I have inherited my grandmother, Florence Elsie Humphries, nee Heaps’ Birthday Book. Elsie, as she was known in the family, was born in 1887. The calf leather-bound “Illustrated Floral Text Book” published by Suttaby & Co., Amen Corner 1888 is inscribed “Elsie from Effie”.

I have been unable to find out who Effie was, I think that is short for Euphemia – there is no one of that name in our family. I have assumed that Effie must have been a contemporary of Elsie as in those days, if from an older generation her name would have had at least a surname or been inscribed ‘Auntie Effie’ or similar. Effie could have been a family pet name of one of Elsie’s cousins but her birth date in the Book was 3rd March (no year stated) and no other relations or cousins to Elsie have that d.o.b. Because of the publication date, a year after Elsie was born, I wonder if perhaps it was given as a Baptism present?

The book has drawings of flowers on the left page, mostly noting what each flower stands for, e.g. Daisy – Innocence; Rosemary – Remembrance; Gorse – Love for all Seasons (that makes sense as there are Gorse flowers all the year round and an Old Pembrokeshire(?) saying is “When Gorse is in Flower, kissing is in season”!) The book has some 180 entries. Some later ones are by my late mother’s easily recognised hand writing and a few more recent, by me. I thought all the rest were by Elsie herself, but some obviously early entries, including Elsie and her siblings, Effie and ‘Mother’ are in ink in a much neater hand, perhaps a teenage copperplate school writing? Most entries are in, somewhat now-faded, pencil and are clearly the handwriting of Elsie, examples of which I have on many old postcards – they were so much more personal than current texts or emails! There are a few newspaper clippings and photos also inserted. Most entries relate to family:- birth; death; baptism and a few other notable dates, including on 13th September “David to Nigeria 1966”.

That was when I left to fly to Kano, Northern Nigeria on Voluntary Service Overseas. Through my Family History research, I discovered many years later that a great uncle of mine, Edwin (Ted) Heaps, was on the supervisory staff in Kano constructing the first runway there! He and his young wife had to travel to Nigeria the slow way, of course, on an Elder and Demster Lines ship, “The Adda” which sailed from Liverpool on 15th February 1928. 1966 was an ill-timed year for me as the brutal Biafran Civil War commenced shortly after I arrived necessitating, for example, a 360 mile lorry journey, each way mostly on laterite roads, passing through many army roadblocks, to buy main groceries as well as petrol and diesel to run the fleet of tractors I was supervising!

The Birthday Book has survived, nearly intact, despite being in at least 15 different homes that I am aware of assuming it was perhaps a teenage gift to Elsie. My clergyman grandfather moved to many different parishes. IF it was gifted in 1889, then as my great grandfather, Joseph Heaps was a Conductor of Supplies in the Army, the Birthday Book had also resided in Aldershot, Hampshire; Alderney in the Channel Islands; Clonmel in Ireland and Oakridge in Gloucestershire, all birth places of Elsie and her siblings.

As I am now the only person who recognises the hand writing, knows most of the names and abbreviations used and who can work out who most entries relate to, I decided to transcribe the book a number of years ago. I used different type face for each different handwriting with a Key as to who wrote which. I also added a column to provide the full name or a note for each entry, e.g. “J.” (always with a full stop) was Elsie’s husband, Rev. James Henry Humphries; the “J.” though was not short for James but stood for ‘Jack’ by which he was called in the family. I was even able to add a note to identify “Mop” as Elsie’s pet dog, so that would not start a wild goose chase for any later generations of family historians.

I would recommend anyone who has such a book to also transcribe it and add explanatory notes of what they know. It was great fun working out who everyone was from my family tree and also the dates in the book filled in a number of gaps. They also added an anomaly of a birth date by one day from formal records. At least my transcription is now easy to pass on down to several branches of future generations, thanks to computers and email, rather residing in one persons’ loft and ultimately becoming lost."

David , if AI is to be trusted you may now be the owner of a rare example of a fine birthday book. I entered its title and publisher details into Google, and Gemini produced this summary which might be of some interest, although it is clearly the deeply personal connection which makes your copy irreplaceable at any price:

"The "Illustrated Floral Textbook" (sometimes bound or formatted explicitly as The Floral Textbook) was one of Suttaby & Co.'s highly unique and sought-after thematic lines from their Amen Corner era. The first edition was published in 1885. While most Victorian birthday books relied heavily on poetry or religious verses, this specific edition uniquely blended the era's obsession with floriography (the Victorian language of flowers), formal botanical illustration, and literary compilation.

The Anatomy of the Floral Textbook

Botanical Meets Literary: Each calendar day featured a highly detailed, small-scale botanical illustration or engraving of a specific flower. Alongside the image, Suttaby included the specific "emblematic meaning" or sentiment associated with that bloom in Victorian culture, paired with a matching poetic fragment.
Premium Chromolithography: Unlike cheaper editions that used simple line art, Suttaby’s premium Floral Textbook lines prominently featured high-quality colour printing (chromolithography) or delicately hand-coloured plates, making the floral illustrations pop against the text.
The "Textbook" Subtitle: Labelling a birthday or keepsake diary as a "textbook" was a clever 19th-century marketing technique. It positioned the item not just as a casual autograph book, but as an educational, elegant reference guide to botany and the romantic language of flowers."

Even better, I managed to find an online archive copy of the 1885 edition where you can even turn the pages and see the whole book in exquisite detail: Illustrated Floral Text-Book (opens in a new tab)

More on Slavery

Following last month's article about "Ben Shaw: The Story of Bryan Blundell", I received an email from Roz Roberts on the same subject of slave ownership, which demonstrates that the practice was not limited to large-scale ownership:

"On the slave trade/slave "owner" issue, I have been able, via then limited Ancestry Registers of Enslaved people for Jamaica, to find out that one of my maternal 3rd great grandfathers "owned" a handful of enslaved people, though there was no mention of any plantation name, so it may have been domestic rather than field enslaved people. When he died in 1822, one of them, Cordelia aged about 22, was "inherited" by his daughter Charlotte, my 2nd great grandmother (born in Jamaica), but who was then married and living in London. I think that she probably "sold" Cordelia to Robert Stuart who was one of the "internal" slave traders within Jamaica. Maybe I can find out more with the new records.

Often people assume that the ending of the transatlantic slave trade was the end of slavery: it wasn't, either in the British colonies or the US. So in the Caribbean there was "internal" slave trading within each colony and between the various Caribbean islands. In the US, internal slave trading was only ended by the ending of the Civil War.

Lost Cousin members with family connections to Charleston and New Orleans may well find that they have DNA/genealogical cousin lines who were involved in the owning or transporting of enslaved people. I wonder how many Lost Cousin members have, like me, also found that they have DNA matches to people of African American heritage? What I find so disturbing is to realise that the rape of black enslaved women was routine, and was accepted as such, while the rape of a white woman (by any male) was, obviously, a crime.

It would be interesting to hear of the stories of any other Lost Cousins on this topic, which has and often still can be, a taboo subject."

Slavery was abolished in the UK under the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, which took effect from 1st August 1834. This was supported by a programme of "compensated emancipation" whereby slave owners could apply to the Government for monetary compensation; the sum set aside was a staggering £20 million, approximately 40% of the UK's annual budget at that time and financed by debt which was only fully repaid during this century. However, the 1833 Act did not apply to British India (controlled by the East India Company); this was rectified by the Indian Slavery Act 1843. And while slave owners received compensation, the newly emancipated slave population received no financial assistance - and those working on plantations were forced into an "apprenticeship" programme which effectively kept them enslaved for a further six years.

This BBC News article dates from 2013, but still contains useful information about How many Britons are descended from slave owners?

Other News

If you'd like to know about new records added to Ancestry, this Card Catalogue page (opens in a new tab) shows which records have been most recently updated. You can also filter by Date Added, which then shows the newest collections available. Nine were added in September alone, and as they say, "Each new record we add could be the next clue you need."

Findmypast do it differently: their New and Trending page (opens in a new tab) only shows the most recently added on "Findmypast Friday" which means checking every week to see what's been added. If anyone knows of a more efficient method, please email me and I will add your tip in the next newsletter.

The SoG is running an online course in collaboration with TheGenealogist, which unusually focuses on Maps for Genealogists (opens in a new tab). The course commences on Monday, 2nd November but the presentations will be available for course attendees to view until December 31st 2026. Highlights include "Getting the Most from The National Library of Scotland Maps with Chris Fleet" and "Using Maps to tell Ancestral Stories on WeAre.xyx with Simon Davies" which looks a lot of fun! TheGenealogist is also offering a £40 lifetime discount on their Annual Diamond Subscription, saving £40 every year for as long as the subscription remains active, plus a bonus digital bundle worth over £75. This makes the course very attractively priced at £65 (or just £52 for SoG members).

And Findmypast has just launched a special feature for Remembrance Day: Findmypast Military Lives (opens in a new tab) . "We’re telling the stories of almost 100,000 soldiers on over 9,000 local war memorials across Britain – with many more still to come. Using [AI] technology, we’re building a detailed picture of each soldier’s life through our extensive collection of historical records and newspapers, so we can share their stories with their communities, and remember them." This facility is brand new and they will add more records over time.

Gardener's Corner

On the weekend when British Summer Time (BST) ended for 2026, the UK experienced its first round of serious storms this Autumn. I returned from my first break in just under a year to thoroughly miserable weather - although there was some scope for celebration even in my heatwave-ruined and rain-soaked garden. I had liberally scattered grass seed over the bare patches in the "lawn" (which is very far from fine grass on flat ground) on the evening before I left, and returned to a verdant swathe of very wet, healthy grass. I can contrast this with the 12 hours of professional lawn restoration at a friend's villa in Portugal, where the unseasonable 30c heat meant that it took at least 8 hours for two professional gardeners to weed, prepare, seed and irrigate a single area of lawn while we watched from our sun loungers.

Most of us in the UK might think that all lawn seed is the same, but it's worth checking out the specialist suppliers because there are different grass mixes for different temperature zones as well as different uses, conditions and appearances. The seed I chose will germinate at lower temperatures; having ordered 20kg of it via Amazon, I could barely lift the bag - but there's plenty left to reseed more bare patches through the winter months. This excellent article (opens in a new tab) explains how to select the right grass seed for your requirements.

The one job that I wish I'd had time to perform sooner is cutting back and tying in the taller roses, whatever type they might be. But the precision timing suggested in countless books and blogs can't always be met; in reality the perfect time for most gardening jobs is whenever you can get around to doing them. I don't prune back fully for next year's growth (the main reshaping and soil preparation is usually done in March), but I do remove enough growth and stake or tie in vulnerable plants to ensure that the roots won't be loosened by strong winds catching long stems. It isn't a long or difficult task, but is best done on a dry day with little wind and while wearing thorn-resilient clothing and gloves.

And the task that I'm most looking forward to is tulip planting, which I leave until November- January to avoid the perils of Tulip Fire Blight (opens in a new tab). There are so many types of tulip that it's possible to have 3-4 months of anything from the blowsiest and loudest varieties in pots and borders, right through to the smaller species that naturalise well in grass. My favourites in recent years are the multi-stemmed varieties like these beautiful Belicia colour changing tulips (opens in a new tab) which happily return each year, given good drainage and sunlight.

And finally…

Thank you for continuing to support and engage with LostCousins, especially while we make the website and forum more user friendly and exciting to use. We are looking forward to providing more newsletter updates as the project unfolds – so remember to check for our Latest Newsletter on the home page on or around 1st of each month!

Siân Lloyd
LostCousins

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