26 April 2005 LostCousins Spring newsletter
Newsletter - Spring 2005
CONTENTS
* How did your English ancestors sound?
* How to reduce the size of graphics files
* Hints & tips: how to use FamilySearch
* 1837online offer – final week
To visit the main LostCousins site please go to www.LostCousins.com
It’s our birthday this week – the LostCousins website opened on May 1st last year, so we’ll soon be one year old!
But before then there’s another very important event – the Family History Show 2005 which takes place this Saturday, April 30th from 10am to 5pm at the Royal Horticultural Society New Hall in Westminster. Although we’ve decided not to have a stand at the event, two of our team (Sian and Peter) will be there wearing LostCousins T-shirts, and handing out leaflets to people as they arrive. By all means say “hello” – it’ll be a rare treat for us to meet members face to face!
We’ve got a pair of tickets for the Show to give away – they’ll go to the member who between now and 3pm on Thursday afternoon uses their ‘My Referrals’ page to tell the most people (friends or relatives) about LostCousins. We reckon that the winning entrant will have made 6 or 7 referrals – but since everyone who makes 3 or more referrals qualifies for free ‘subscriber status’ until the end of June, it’s well worth entering even if you don’t win the main prize.
We’ll post the leading score on the Latest News page on the LostCousins site – send an email to competition@LostCousins.com if you can beat it. If you don’t live in the UK, or can’t make it to the Show, you can nominate friends or relatives to attend in your place (and we’ll send the tickets direct to them).
The tickets will be sent by Royal Mail Special Delivery on Thursday so when you enter please make sure that your postal address including your postcode is correctly shown on your ‘My Details’ page. (If it isn’t then your prize will go to the next best entrant).
HOW DID YOUR ENGLISH ANCESTORS SOUND?
There’s a wonderful British Library site called Collect Britain that allows you to hear accents and dialects from all over England - and it’s free! Some of the recordings are modern, but over 200 are from the 1950s, and many of those you will hear talking were born during the reign of Queen Victoria. There are many other collections on the site, which you will find at http://www.collectbritain.co.uk
We expect you’d like to know how to find more ‘lost cousins’ – who wouldn’t?
Let’s start with a surprising fact - statistical analysis has shown that most LostCousins members already have at least one ‘lost cousin’ amongst our membership. Why aren’t you already in contact? Because one of you has yet to enter the key relatives that would enable us to make the connection!
So if you’ve identified relatives on the 1881 census, add them to your ‘My Ancestors’ page. Yes, it may take you a few minutes - but finding a ‘lost cousin’ could save you literally months of research.
TIP #1: The more relatives you enter on your ‘My Ancestors’ page, the sooner you’ll be in contact with your ‘lost cousins’.
LostCousins is all about finding people who are descended from the same ancestor. So why enter anyone other than your direct ancestors?
The automated matching process is very sophisticated - it can work out which members share an ancestor even if the common ancestor died long before the 1881 Census. But it can only do that if you enter all of your relatives, not just the ones in your direct line.
TIP #2: Enter all the relatives you can find, not just your direct ancestors.
In Victorian times it was normal for women to take their husband’s name when they married. So finding your ancestor’s sisters and aunts on the census is usually more difficult than finding their brothers and uncles.
However, it’s amazing how often close relatives were also close neighbours. When you access the 1881 census on the FamilySearch site you can click on ‘Previous Household’ and ‘Next Household’ to find out who the neighbours were. The surnames may have changed, but the first names and places of birth usually haven’t.
TIP #3: Check to see whether any of your ancestors’ neighbours are related - you’ll be amazed how often you discover a ‘missing’ relative.
Are you stuck? Are you up against a brick wall in your research? It’s amazing how often a fresh pair of eyes can spot something that’s been starting you in the face!
We have a great team of ‘buddies’ who give up their time to help other members with their research. Whether you’re a beginner wondering where to go next, or an experienced researcher who has run out of ideas, we and our buddies will do our best to help. Email info@LostCousins.com and include the words ‘Help Wanted’ in the title.
TIP #4: When you’re up against a brick wall - just ask for help!
If you use a family history program you can print a family tree or ancestor chart at the drop of a hat – but you’re probably restricted to A4 paper, anything bigger being assembled using scissors and sticky tape. Not the sort of thing you’d want to frame and put on the wall, or send as a birthday present!
There are numerous small companies that offer to print family trees, but when the makers of the superb BBC2 series ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ wanted charts, they went to Genealogy Printers (http://www.genealogyprinters.com).
What makes Genealogy Printers different, is that BEFORE you place your order or pay any money, you get to see (on your computer screen) what your tree or chart will look like and have the chance to alter its design! They also offer free Airmail shipping anywhere in the world. If you want to know more check out their FAQs page at:
http://www.genealogyprinters.com/catalog/faq.php or visit them at the Family History Show.
HOW TO REDUCE THE SIZE OF GRAPHICS FILES
If you use sites such as Ancestry, 1837online, or the 1901 site you’ve probably built up quite a collection of graphics files, some of which are larger than they really need to be. Sending copies to relatives can be a little tedious unless you both have broadband connections - and then there’s the question of disk space.
We recently came across a FREE graphics program called Irfanview that allows you to crop images, re-size them, and convert them into other formats. It’s the only program we’ve found that can read the DjVu files that 1837online uses – and convert them into more conventional formats such as JPG. Find out more from http://www.irfanview.com
Ancestry have recently added a searchable index of Births from 1984 to 2000. Marriages and Deaths for the same period can also be searched at Ancestry, and whilst they are available at pay-per-view sites, for those you with an Ancestry subscription it’s a chance to look up as many as you like for no extra charge.
By the way, we’ve recently been looking at the new FamilyRelatives.org site, which seems to have some interesting features, and would like to hear from any LostCousins members who have tried it out. How well has it worked for you?
Have you ever wondered what area a particular Registration District covered? On the GENUKI site there’s an index to all of the districts in England & Wales at: http://www.fhsc.org.uk/genuki/REG/district.htm
HINTS & TIPS – HOW TO USE FAMILYSEARCH
The FamilySearch site is one of the most useful family history sites there is for those researching their British ancestors – perhaps the best of the lot. And it’s completely free!
However it isn’t the easiest site to find your way around, so we thought it would be useful to provide a quick guide. When you click on Search it takes you to the ‘All Resources’ search page – but whilst it’s tempting to use this search you won’t get the best results. There are two key resources that we use all the time - the 1881 Census of England & Wales, and the International Genealogical Index, but to get the best out of each you need to search them separately.
Let’s start with the 1881 Census – click on Census to bring up the ‘Census Search’ page, and select 1881 British Census from the drop-down menu. Note that whilst it’s described as the British Census, it doesn’t include Scotland (or Ireland).
Type the name of the person you’re looking for in the boxes labelled ‘First Name’ and ‘Last Name’; how much more information you enter depends partly on how much you know (or think you know), and on how unusual the person’s name is. In general you should enter the minimum of information – the more you specify the greater the chance that you’ll miss the person you’re looking for, whether because of a transcription error, or because the information on the census was simply wrong.
Indeed, you should hardly ever specify a precise year of birth, even if you know the person’s exact birthdate. Ages on censuses were frequently incorrect, and in any case the way that the FamilySearch site calculates the year of birth is to subtract the age from 1881, which – considering the census was in early April – is usually going to give the wrong answer. Use the ‘Birth Year Range’ to provide some leeway – plus or minus two years is usually sufficient.
When should you specify the name of the ‘Head of Household’? It’s a useful way to narrow down the search when the name of the person you’re looking for is very common. For example, a search for ‘Mary Smith’ born in 1850 throws up 385 results, but if you specify ‘John Smith’ as the head of household you’ll have just 40 to look through. It’s also a good way of finding a family whose surname has been badly mistranscribed – leave out the last name altogether, but fill in as many of the other fields as you can.
Once you have found the person you’ve been searching for, and have displayed their ‘Individual Record’, click on the word ‘Household’ at the right of the page to display the entire household. We’d recommend that you print out the ‘Household Record’ for your files as it not only shows all the names, ages, occupations and birthplaces – it also gives the references you need to enter your relatives on your ‘My Ancestors’ page.
In the next newsletter we’ll be taking a look at the International Genealogical Index (the IGI).
Whether you’re looking for family history software or census CDs it’s difficult to know which to buy and where to buy it. However we’ve recently discovered a supplier who not only promises to beat anyone else’s price (including delivery), but also offers free and unlimited technical support (normally 8am to 10pm 7 days a week)!
TWR Computing supplies and supports all the major family history programs and data CDs, including three major ranges of census CDs. One range of census CDs is complete for the whole of England and Wales, fully indexed, searchable, browsable with full references and available with or without high quality scanned images.
All prices are fully inclusive, even including airmail delivery to anywhere in the world. TWR will beat any other supplier's inclusive prices! Visit http://www.twrcomputing.co.uk or see their range at the Family History Show this weekend (tables 119-121).
It’s your last chance to take advantage of the offer we negotiated with 1837online. You’ll get 20% extra credits when you enter the code: LCAP2 (please make sure that after entering the code you click on the Apply button).
These credits can be used to view pages from the complete BMD indexes or the 1861 Census, and whilst the offer runs out at the end of April, the units won’t!
AND FINALLY……..
Remember that the number of ‘lost cousins’ we’re able to find depends on the number of members. And the amazing thing is - when the membership doubles the number of ‘lost cousins’ found increases by FOUR times!
Every time you tell someone about LostCousins you’re starting off a chain reaction. For example, that person might tell two others – and one of them might post a message on a forum. Another member of the forum might tell a friend – who then posts a message on a newsgroup. Everyone who reads that message (and all the others in the chain) is the ‘lost cousin’ of somebody – perhaps it could be you!
Thanks for your support over the past year – we couldn’t have achieved so much without your help!
The LostCousins Team
© Copyright 2005 Peter Calver & Lost Cousins Ltd
Please do NOT copy or republish any part of this newsletter without permission - which is only granted in the most exceptional circumstances. However, you MAY link to this newsletter or any article in it without asking for permission - though why not invite other family historians to join LostCousins instead, since standard membership (which includes the newsletter), is FREE?