1st October 2026 LostCousins Newsletter

Newsletter Edition – 1st October 2026

The LostCousins newsletter will be published once or twice a month while we are in transition. To access the previous issues and use the search feature, click here. 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:

• LostCousins Upgrade News
• Ben Shaw: The Story of Bryan Blundell, Master Mariner, Philanthropist and Slave Trader
• NEW - Ancestry's release of 4 million slave records
• Birthday Books
• Explore the Royal School of Needlework's past
• Planning to Preserve your Research?
• Stop Press: TheGenealogist adds new Lincolnshire history AND is offering a lifetime discount!

LostCousins Upgrade News

Alexander and Tim have been very busy this month - and here is their news, which summarises a lot of planning as well as making things happen: 

"In last month’s newsletter Siân explained why LostCousins is moving to modern systems and introduced the team doing the work. This month we’d like to show you what has been achieved since then, what is still to come, and what it will mean for you.

What we’re aiming for

● Keep what works. As Siân said, LostCousins isn’t becoming something different. You’ll still enter relatives from specific census households, and matching will stay as precise as it is today.
● Make it safer. Your data will sit on modern, well-protected servers and be backed up automatically every night.
● Make it easier to use on any device, whether that’s a desktop computer, a tablet or a phone.
● Build for the future. A modern foundation lets us add improvements far more easily than the old system allows.

Progress so far

● A new home. The new site is up and running on modern servers, where we are testing it thoroughly behind the scenes.
● Simpler signing in. You won’t need to remember another password. You’ll be able to sign in with your existing Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook or Yahoo account. If you use a different email provider, we’ll simply email you a one-time code to sign in with.
● The newsletter archive. Every newsletter back to 2004 is now in one place, including early issues that only ever went out by email. Members who joined more recently can read the full story of LostCousins from the beginning.
● Information pages. The About Us, FAQs, How It Works and census links pages have been rebuilt and updated.
● The forum. Forum members will already have seen last month’s upgrade to the latest version of the forum software. Next, the forum will move onto the same servers as the new website, which is simpler and more efficient to run. You should notice little difference: your posts and forum account come with it.
● Protecting your records. We have built tools that copy every member’s records from the old site to the new one. They have been tested many times on a copy of the existing data, so nothing will be lost.

What happens next

Next we’ll rebuild the member area, where you enter your ancestors and see your matches. When that has been thoroughly tested, we’ll copy everyone’s records across one final time and switch over. The address stays lostcousins.com. You won’t need to re-enter anything or join again, and we’ll give you plenty of notice before the change.

What you can expect

● A site that works on your phone or tablet as well as on your computer
● Faster pages and fewer frustrations
● No more forgotten passwords
● Stronger protection for the information you’ve entrusted to us
● New features added sooner than was possible before

We’re taking our time over this on purpose. LostCousins holds decades of careful research by tens of thousands of members, and getting it right matters more than getting it done quickly. Thank you for your patience and support. We look forward to showing you more in a future issue."

Ben Shaw: The Story of Bryan Blundell, Master Mariner, Philanthropist and Slave Trader

Ben Shaw is a writer and family historian whose research into his own family led him unexpectedly into the history of eighteenth-century Liverpool. He has recently joined LostCousins and brings with him a brand new book which might interest members with ancestral connections to Liverpool. 

Ben's journey began in 2010, when he was given a mysterious 1595 Geneva Breeches Bible. He spent the next ten years trying to establish how it had come into his family, eventually discovering that the last person to write in it, in 1723, was almost certainly his 12th cousin, 11 times removed. That discovery led him to his 8x great-grandfather, Bryan Blundell. Although Blundell had never owned the Bible, his life and those of his descendants became an important part of the story of how it had passed through the generations.

His search for the bible’s origins also forced him to research many of the families in Liverpool between 1650 and 1850 and realising that many of them were interrelated in early Liverpool. It therefore opened up a much bigger story about Liverpool, its people and its history. 

The research eventually became Ben’s first book, The Slave Trader: The Story of Bryan Blundell, a narrative non-fiction account of Blundell’s life at sea and his later involvement in the slave trade.

Blundell first went to sea aged 12, and Ben’s research led him to his surviving sea journal, held at Lancashire Archives. Using the journal alongside genealogical records, archival material and research into the places Blundell visited, Ben traces his life from his early years at sea to his later career as a Liverpool merchant, mariner and philanthropist. Blundell co-founded the Blue Coat School in 1709, but his life and business ventures also reflect Liverpool’s growing involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, which forms an important part of the book.

The story also uncovered another fascinating family connection: Christopher Bassnett, a nonconformist preacher who preached directly to Blundell and the crew of one of his ships, warning them of the moral dangers of entering the slave trade. Yet only a few years later, Blundell himself became directly involved in the trade. Ben is a descendant of both the preacher and the slave trader.

The book therefore offers more than the life of one man. It combines genealogy, archival research and historical investigation to explore eighteenth-century Liverpool, its merchant families, maritime connections and involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. For anyone researching Liverpool ancestors, particularly those whose family history reaches back into the eighteenth century, it may reveal familiar names, places and connections, while offering a glimpse into the world in which their ancestors lived.

What began with a search for the history of one family Bible ultimately opened the door to a much bigger history of Liverpool and the families who helped shape it.

We wish Ben every success with his book. You can order or reserve your own copy through one of the links below. Even better, LostCousins members have been offered 25% off the RRP when ordering through the UK publisher Pen & Sword - so don't delay!!

• UK Pen and Sword -          Pen and Sword Books: The Slave Trader - Hardback (enter the code Trader25 at checkout for a discount of 25% off RRP)
• US – Barnes and Noble -  The Slave Trader: The Story of Bryan Blundell, Master Mariner, Philanthropist and Slave Trader  
• Australia - Booktopia -     Slave Trader: the Story of Bryan Blundell, Master Mariner, Philanthropist and Slave Trader  

NEW - Ancestry's release of 4 million slave records

Coincidentally, last week Ancestry released new digitised records of 4 million slaves on a freely accessible basis, and you can read all about it in this Ancestry Press Release which details exactly what you are likely to discover through them. I also thought that this extract was a poignant extension of the theme of Ben's book :

“Created by the British government following the 1807 abolition of the transatlantic slave trade to prevent illegal trading of enslaved persons, these registers were used to track and regulate the enslaved population in British colonies prior to emancipation,” said Dr. Matthew J. Smith, Director of the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery at University College London. “While these administrative documents managed an unjust system, today they serve as primary sources that expose the human scale and administrative mechanisms of British colonial slavery and offer an entry point into understanding the lives of those enslaved.”

Birthday Books

It's sometimes strange how a perfectly ordinary event can turn extraordinary when conversations drift into discussing family history. Over a lunch out, a friend showed me some photos of a very old and fragile birthday book which she had inherited. While initially reticent to research any of her East London maternal ancestors because (putting it mildly) there was ample anecdotal evidence of things that she would prefer not to know about, she warmed to the idea once I offered to research some of the names in the book and possibly publish some of the findings. 

Birthday books were small diary-style volumes used to record the birthdates of family and friends. They became a major cultural phenomenon in Victorian Britain during the late 19th century and were originally expensive, beautifully bound keepsakes that featured a specific quote, Bible verse or poem for every day of the year alongside a blank space for autographs. Popularised by publishers like Frederick Warne & Co. and George Routledge & Sons, they frequently compiled the works of famous British literary figures such as Shakespeare, Tennyson - and in this case, Longfellow- into best selling editions for mass publication. They were primarily cherished as social registries and sentimental keepsakes, passed down through generations to preserve a family's network of loved ones.

Here is my friend's birthday book- which she knew nothing about except that it was a family heirloom:

A Gemini AI analysis of these photos suggests that this book was a British mass market edition published between 1878 and 1885. Possibly this is one of the highly popular miniature versions of Charlotte Fiske Bates' arrangements of Longfellow's poetry which was first produced in the USA. The exposed twine supports the use of cheaper sewing with white string, as opposed to high end bookbinding. Green was the premier cover colour of the late 1870s and 1880s, and the floral design is typical of the Japanese-influenced simple, stylised nature motif that was also popular at that time. The printing of a black chain-linked frame on the blank pages would have avoided the cost of multi- coloured printing and was achieved by applying a single black-ink stamp. The three day layout was standardised in the 1880s, making these books very compact and portable. Because this version was printed in massive quantities, the value of a specific copy will be as a family heirloom and window into the lives of the ancestors whose names, birthdays and signatures are preserved in their own handwriting. 

Once my friend has transcribed all of the information that she can glean from this example, it might be possible to compare the details against publicly held records, mindful that cherished keepsakes like this birthday book probably contain highly accurate information. The birthday book data could be used to verify exact dates, discover unrecorded relatives (such as children who were born and died between census dates), find maiden names and marriages, or help to reconstruct social circles and the timing of "joiners and leavers" within a close family network. 

Further analysis of the book itself might reveal a publication date (a useful baseline for original ownership), authentic handwriting and signatures, including variations such as amendments to dates, crossed out entries (probably indicating a death), and the inks revealing clues about changes and amendments which might have been made a lot later on. Sometimes, addresses and notes were pencilled into the margins or at the back of the book. 

There will be more revealed about this book as our collaboration unfolds. Meanwhile, here is a beautifully rich article from Cardiff University on how to get the most out of historical birthday books.

And who knows - one of your cousins might have a birthday book gathering house dust because they don't know what genealogical gold dust it contains. So it's worth asking other family members if they have ever seen a little book with poems on one page and autographs on the other!

Explore the Royal School of Needlework's past

Once upon a time, I almost accepted a job as a trainee working in the costume department at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London. Had I not been lured by £500 more to work in a bank, I would have been considerably poorer but possibly happier developing my needlework skills to create some of the magnificent costumes worn by some of the most talented singers and dancers in the world. Findmypast have recently added a Royal School of Needlework Collection to their searchable database. While this is a comparatively small collection, it will be of interest to those whose ancestors worked or studied at the RSN. And for enthusiasts like me, these records bring life to an institution which has taught and produced fine needlework of the highest quality for royalty, the nobility and the performing arts. You can find out more about the history of the Royal College of Needlework to help put this new collection in context.