30 May 2005 LostCousins End of May newsletter
Newsletter - End of May 2005
CONTENTS
* Deceased Wife’s Sister Marriage Act
To visit the main LostCousins site please go to www.LostCousins.com
We’re always delighted when members write to us with suggestions for improving the LostCousins website, especially when we’re able to make the changes that you have asked for.
Over the past two months we have been working on a whole range of improvements to the website, and during the first week of June we will begin putting them into effect. Some of the changes will affect the way that the information on your ‘My Ancestors’ page is displayed, and how your relatives are matched with those of other LostCousins members.
However - for these improvements to work effectively we need your help!
Are any of the relatives you have entered on your ‘My Ancestors’ page your spouse’s relatives? If so, it would help enormously if you could delete those relatives (we assume that your spouse already has an account of his or her own, and that the relatives have already been entered on that account).
If you’ve included your spouse’s relatives on your ‘My Ancestors’ page, but he or she doesn’t yet have a LostCousins account please email info@LostCousins.com for advice.
As we mentioned in the last newsletter, some of the new features we’ll be implementing are for subscribers only.
If you’re not already a subscriber, how can you become one? There’s only one way at the moment, which is to help your fellow members by expanding the LostCousins membership. Use your ‘My Referrals’ page to tell three people about LostCousins, and you’ll qualify for subscriber status until the end of June, which will give you a chance to try out the new features we’re introducing over the next couple of weeks.
In the next newsletter we’ll tell you how you can extend your free subscription beyond June (it won’t cost you a penny!).
DECEASED WIFE’S SISTER MARRIAGE ACT
Did you know that until 1907 it was illegal for a widower to marry his dead wife’s sister? There were many attempts to change the law – Queen Victoria herself supported one failed attempt in 1879 – and a prominent Victorian, the pre-Raphaelite painter William Holman Hunt, openly defied the law in 1875 when marrying Edith Waugh, the sister of his late wife Fanny.
Many ordinary people also broke the law, possibly through ignorance, and you may well find an instance in your own family tree. When the law changed in 1907, marriages that had taken place previously were legitimised, but it no doubt remained a matter that was discussed only in hushed whispers.
FreeBMD is one of the most useful resources for anyone researching relatives who were born, married, or died in England & Wales. Constituted as a charitable trust, and supported by hard-working volunteers, the primary objective is to transcribe all of the index entries from the commencement of civil registration in 1837 up to 1910. Five years ago just 850,000 entries had been transcribed – now there are over 100 million!
Unlike 1837online, FreeBMD isn’t a complete index of births, marriages, and deaths. However, thanks to the sterling efforts of the transcribers, coverage is now close to being complete for most years between 1837 to 1910, with the biggest gaps in the years prior to 1866 which have handwritten indexes. If you go to http://www.freebmd.org.uk/progress.shtml you can display charts showing the percentage of each quarter’s entries that have been transcribed.
As with the census, it’s important not to enter too much information when you search FreeBMD. In particular you need to be reticent about specifying middle names - sometimes these were added only when a child was christened, and so don’t appear on the birth certificate, and in later years only middle initials are shown in the index. Note: if you enter an initial the search will find any name that begins with that letter.
Because FreeBMD is a free service run by volunteers there is limited server capacity, and searches that take too long will be rejected. In this situation the best solution is usually to search over a shorter period, but an alternative is to search the same records at Ancestry.co.uk, where the response is quicker and there are few restrictions. However the search at Ancestry is less powerful than that at FreeBMD, and the results are presented in a less useful format.
FreeBMD is an excellent place to start looking for the birth, marriage, or death of a relative because you can search for a precise name. For example, if you were searching for the death of the author and politician Benjamin Disraeli you would soon discover that it was registered in the quarter to June 1881 at St George’s, Hanover Square register office in London.
As it happens there is only person of that name whose death is currently recorded on FreeBMD, but if you were to look for the death of Florence Nightingale you’d find there are over 100 who died between 1857-1910. However, if you happen to know that Florence Nightingale was born in 1820 you can use this information to narrow down the search.
From 1866 onwards the age at death is shown in the index, and FreeBMD allows you to take this into account when you search. If you search for a Florence Nightingale who died between 1866-1910 and enter ‘@1820’ in the box labelled ‘Death age/DoB’ you’ll get just one result – the right one (Florence Nightingale lived to the ripe old age of 90 and died in 1910.) You can also enter a range of birth years, for example ‘@1819-1821’.
Because the indexes at FreeBMD are incomplete the site is most effective when used in conjunction with the complete indexes at 1837online. Start your search at FreeBMD, then if you’ve been unable to find the relative you’re seeking search the complete indexes at 1837online. Fortunately you can save yourself a lot of time and money by first checking the charts that show FreeBMD’s coverage – because the quarters in which the percentage is lowest are the ones you should check first at 1837online.
For example, if FreeBMD is 90% complete in one quarter, but only 10% complete in another then, when you search the complete indexes, you’re 9 times more likely to find the event you’re seeking in the quarter with only 10% coverage. The less pages you view the longer your credits will last!
Beginners often make the mistake of assuming that the first person they find with the right name is the one they’re looking, and because FreeBMD is an incomplete index it’s that much easier to jump to the wrong conclusion. Before spending 7 pounds on a certificate it might well be worth spending a few pence checking the complete indexes at 1837online.
When you’re searching at FreeBMD you can specify one or more counties or one or more registration districts (this is particularly useful when you’ve found someone’s place of birth on the census). To find out the registration district in which a town or village falls refer to the GENUKI site: http://www.fhsc.org.uk/genuki/REG/
Similarly, if you’ve found an entry on FreeBMD, but don’t know what area the registration district covers, just click on the name of the district.
Whilst the primary function of FreeBMD and 1837online is to provide the references that you need to order a birth, marriage, or death certificate it’s easy to overlook other ways in which you might use the sites. One is to discover the middle names of your ancestors by finding their births in the index, and another is to identify children who died in infancy (and so never appeared on a census). A third is to determine an approximate birthdate – useful when, as often happens, the ages on the censuses are inconsistent.
But the best feature of FreeBMD is the way you can find out who your relatives married – without paying out for a certificate! Prior to 1852 up to 4 marriages were listed on each page in the registers – after that date it was usually just 2. Once you’ve found a marriage entry at FreeBMD you can click on the page number to find out the other people on the same page – one of whom is going to be the spouse. Usually you’ll have enough additional information (eg a first name from the census) to work out who it was.
A final note: when you search the FreeBMD site you’ll often see a small “pair of spectacles” at the end of an entry. Clicking on the spectacles allows you to view a scan of the original index page - just follow the instructions that appear (they’ll be in a new window). You’ll find this an easy way to check for possible transcription errors, and to find other entries for the same surname.
Beginning in June 1783 a series of massive volcanic eruptions in Iceland led to atmospheric pollution across Europe which turned the moon red, and caused an estimated 30,000 deaths in England alone. During August and September, the worst months, the number of burials in England was 40% higher than average, and there was another spike in January and February of 1784 when numbers were more than 20% higher. Of course, these statistics weren’t available at the time – it’s only modern analysis of the records that has identified the extent of the tragedy.
Did any of your ancestors die between July 1783 and February 1784? Could they have been victims of the smog?
Have you entered the maiden names for those of your female relatives who were married or widowed at the time of the 1881 Census? Although maiden name information is not currently used for matching purposes, we are hoping to provide a new search facility based around maiden names.
If you have not already done so then we’d encourage you to enter the maiden names that you know.
Although most LostCousins members have so far entered less than 100 relatives on their ‘My Ancestors’ page, there are some who have entered over 500, and one whose current total is 932, which is really amazing!
But the important thing to remember is that EVERY relative you enter brings you closer to finding your ‘lost cousins’. If you’ve so far entered 10 relatives then entering just 10 more will double your chances. And if you’ve yet to enter any at all then entering even one or two will make an enormous difference.
We’re here to help. If you’d like us to kickstart your research just send an email to info@LostCousins.com and we’ll do our very best. We’ve got a great team of ‘buddies’ who volunteer their time to help other members on a completely confidential basis.
AND FINALLY…….
A reminder that whilst we do everything we can to match up members who share the same ancestors, we can’t match you up with someone who isn’t a member. Put it another way, the more members there are, the more ‘lost cousins’ you’re going to find!
Our experience has shown that personal recommendation is the best way to encourage people to join, so if you can help in any way we and your fellow members will be very grateful.
Thanks for everything!
The Lost Cousins Team
http://www.LostCousins.com
info@LostCousins.com
© 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?