27 June 2005 LostCousins Newsletter
Newsletter - June 2005
CONTENTS
* New LostCousins features – everything you need to know
* Scotlandspeople – new look & new features
* Masterclass – what if the parents didn’t marry?
* The 1881 Census: FamilySearch or Ancestry?
To visit the main LostCousins site please go to www.LostCousins.com
As a recent joined member we thought you might be interested in a copy of our most recent newsletter, which was issued in early June.
We’ve had some good news since our last newsletter – LostCousins has been selected as one of the 101 Best Undiscovered websites in the world by Family Tree Magazine, the biggest-selling genealogy publication in the US!
More good news – we have just implemented many of the improvements to the site that we’ve been planning over the past three months. You’ll find out exactly what has changed later in this newsletter.
Unfortunately we haven’t been able to ‘go live’ with the new subscriber-only features as these need more testing. Our aim now is to implement them on July 1st, and to ensure that all subscribers have an opportunity to try them out we are extending by one month (to July 31st) all subscriptions that were due to expire at the end of June.
If you would like a free subscription to the end of July, all you need to do is tell three people about the LostCousins site using your ‘My Referrals’ page. Remember, you don’t have to be a subscriber to be a member of LostCousins – but subscribers will have access to extra features.
NEW FEATURES – WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
‘MY ANCESTORS’
In response to numerous requests from members we have replaced ‘Corrected age’ with ‘Corrected birth date’. This can be just the year, the month and year, or day, month, and year – depending on the accuracy of the information you have. We’d certainly encourage you to enter the full birth date if you have a copy of the birth certificate.
You’ll also notice a new button on your ‘My Ancestors’ page – ‘Print format’. This useful new feature displays the data in a format that’s more suitable for printing – and we’ve taken the opportunity to include information that isn’t normally shown (full census references and maiden names). Even if you don’t have a printer you’ll find that this is a handy way to view the information you’ve entered.
‘MY REFERRALS’
The referrals system works very well – but until now there hasn’t been an easy way to send a reminder to a friend or relative who hasn’t joined.
We’ve now added a ‘Resend’ button alongside every outstanding referral. Click on this button and an email will be displayed. Just click on ‘Submit’ and it will be sent instantly to your friend or relative - or copy the text into your own email program (which will give you an opportunity to make changes if you wish).
‘MY DETAILS’
This is where the information about YOU is kept – and where you can change your password, or the email address to which messages from LostCousins (and ‘lost cousins’) are sent.
From now on, whenever you change your email address or password we will send you an email confirming the change. If it is your email address that has changed, we will send an email to both the old address and the new one.
‘MY SUMMARY’
This page now shows the date you joined LostCousins, and (if you’re a subscriber) the date on which your subscription expires. If you’re not a subscriber you can upgrade by using your ‘My Referrals’ page to tell 3 people about LostCousins.
‘MY LINKS’
On this page you get the opportunity to rate sites recommended by other LostCousins members. Each site can be rated between 1 (terrible) and 10 (excellent), but please rate only sites that you’ve used yourself. For example, if you don’t have any Scottish ancestors, you probably won’t be in a position to rate the Scotlandspeople site.
Until now you’ve had to wait for us to tell you the average ratings – now you’ll be able to see them on your ‘My Links’ page. This will enable us to change the list of sites more frequently than we have in the past.
To mark this change we’re going to have a completely new list of sites – all of which have been created by LostCousins members! If you would like your site to be included, please email info@LostCousins.com with the web address to find out whether it qualifies.
‘SUCCESS STORIES’
This is a brand-new page on which you’ll find contributions from a very small selection of the members who have found ‘lost cousins’ through the site. If you’ve found a ‘lost cousin’ though the site and would like to share your story please email info@LostCousins.com with ‘Success Stories’ as the subject.
‘HOME PAGE’
We’ve completely revised the home page that is seen by someone who visits the site for the first time. The new page focuses attention on the key advantages of the LostCousins approach, and we anticipate that it will significantly increase the number of casual visitors who decide to join.
Before the end of June we plan to add an ‘Index of Maiden Names’. It’s always more difficult finding female relatives in the census, and with this innovative new feature we hope to solve a few mysteries. We’d very much appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to check that you have entered maiden names for those of your female relatives who married before 1881. (The new ‘Print format’ option on your ‘My Ancestors’ page displays the maiden names that you have entered, so it is easier than ever before to pinpoint the gaps.)
Also due for completion before the end of the month is a new ‘Subscribers Only’ page – we’ll tell you more about this in the next newsletter.
SCOTLANDSPEOPLE - NEW LOOK & NEW FEATURES
The Scotlandspeople site has also been extensively updated. We’ve only just heard about the changes, so haven’t had a chance to try the site out, but looking through the list of improvements we were very impressed!
If you have Scottish ancestors this is THE site to visit. Even before the alterations LostCousins members had made comments such as “by far the best of the pay-to-view sites”, “why can't the English records not be so accessible”, and “a wonderful site for researching Scottish ancestors - everything in one place, including B, D & M certificates online!”
MASTERCLASS – WHAT IF THE PARENTS DIDN’T MARRY?
This is the first in a occasional series of articles intended for more experienced family historians. This article was inspired by one of our members who, following a suggestion we had made, managed to solve a mystery that we had thought virtually un-crackable!
We often get requests for help from members who have tracked a family on several censuses, but can’t find an entry for the parents in the index of marriages, nor one for any of the children in the index of births. In a case like this there’s one simple, and very likely, explanation – the couple didn’t marry! In this situation the births of the children would normally have been indexed only under the mother’s maiden name, even if the father’s name was recorded on the certificate.
When the mother’s maiden name is unknown, as it usually is in these circumstances, trying to find the children’s birth records seems like looking for the proverbial ‘needle in a haystack’. And yet there is hope!
Assuming that you haven’t been able to find the baptisms in the IGI, there are two other lines of enquiry that have worked successfully in cases we’ve been involved with. We’ll start with the simpler of the two.
When Victorian mothers registered the births of illegitimate children they frequently sought to include the name of the father on the certificate – and they did this by making the father’s surname one of the child’s forenames, usually the middle name. Thus on the certificate the name of Jane, daughter of Mary Smith and Edward Brown would appear as Jane Brown, and it would be indexed as Jane Brown Smith.
If you know the approximate year of birth, and can work out the registration district (the GENUKI site has all the information you need), then all you need to do is search for children who were given Brown as a middle name. Searching for middle names isn’t possible at FreeBMD, but you can do it using the free search of the same database at Ancestry (just enter the father’s surname as the forename and leave the surname blank).
Of course, just because you find a Jane Brown Smith it doesn’t mean that this is the right person. But if you repeat the search for other children in the family, and the name Smith keeps cropping up, then it is extremely likely that you’ve hit on the right surname.
That’s the easier of the two methods. The second method should be employed when the first fails to find any candidates – it is a way of discovering the mother’s surname even when the children were not given the father’s surname as a forename.
You’ll need either a printer and plenty of desk space, or a spreadsheet program. For each of the children use either FreeBMD or Ancestry - you’ll usually find that Ancestry is faster - to find all of the births with the right forename at the right time in the right registration district. Then look for surnames that appear in more than one list (one way to do this would be to put all the information into a spreadsheet and sort by surname).
Because the FreeBMD database is incomplete you’re unlikely to find a matching surname for every child. But supposing you were looking for the births of Arthur, Brian, Charles, Doris, and Edna – and included amongst the hundreds of names you had an Arthur Jones, a Brian White, a Brian Jones, a Charles White, and an Edna Jones.
There’s a reasonable chance that Jones is the mother’s maiden name – but to be more certain you need to find a Charles Jones and a Doris Jones in the births index. Clearly they are not in the FreeBMD database, so you’ll have to look in the complete indexes of births (at 1837online, for example). If you do find them, then the next step would be to order the birth certificate for one child to confirm the names of the parents. If not, then go through the same procedure for White – you’ll need to look for an Arthur White, a Doris White, and an Edna White.
These two methods won’t always come up with an answer, but when they do it will seem like a miracle!
One of us was recently at the London Metropolitan Archives looking for the baptism of one of his ancestors in the registers of St Mary, Rotherhithe. He didn’t find what he was looking for, but he did find an interesting entry on 30th October 1811:
“Henry Easter, said to be the son of Crangelow, King of Easter Island, in the Pacific Ocean [age] about 22 yrs”
A search on Google found a list of the kings of Easter Island, known by the locals as Rapanui, but none was anything like “Crangelow”. But a search for Henry Easter did uncover this note:
“In 1806, Captain Benjamin Page took a young Rapanui with him to London, where he was baptised "Henry Easter" at Rotherhithe in 1812.”
We wonder what happened to Henry Easter - did he survive the English climate? Did he ever return home?
THE 1881 CENSUS – FAMILYSEARCH vs ANCESTRY
When the LostCousins site was designed we assumed that our members would be accessing the 1881 Census of England & Wales at the FamilySearch site – because, at the time, it was the only online index. Now Ancestry not only has the same index, but also offers (for subscribers only) the chance to view the handwritten census pages.
The search options are different at the two sites – at FamilySearch you can specify the names of two people in the household (one being the Head); at Ancestry you can only specify one name. At Ancestry you can specify a precise birthplace; at FamilySearch you can specify only the county of birth.
There are advantages in using both sites – but when it comes to entering information on your ‘My Ancestors’ page we strongly recommend that you use FamilySearch as your source. The ‘Household Record’ at FamilySearch shows all of the census information for a normal household on a single page – including the references that you need. For example, here is the Household Record for a typical Victorian family:
John S. SMITH Head M Male 59 Henlow, Bedford Labourer
Emma SMITH Wife M Female 52 Shefford, Bedford Straw Plaitmaker
Lois SMITH Daur U Female 26 Shefford, Bedford Straw Plaitmaker
Clara SMITH Daur U Female 3 Shefford, Bedford
James SMITH Son Male 5 m Bedford, Bedford
Charles KING Lodger M Male 25 Spoowick, Huntingdon Groom(N.D.)
Clara KING Wife M Female 21 Shefford, Huntingdon, England Straw Hat Sewer
Source Information:
Dwelling 81 Priory St
Census Place Bedford St Paul, Bedford, England
Family History Library Film 1341388
Public Records Office Reference RG11
Piece / Folio 1623 / 99
Page Number 8
To get the same information at Ancestry you have to go to two different pages, and it is presented in a less helpful format.
Also, if you’re an Ancestry subscriber, you may be tempted to enter information from the handwritten census page – but remember that the information on your ‘My Ancestors’ page must be taken from the census transcription, and not the handwritten original (otherwise we won’t be able to match your relatives with those of other members).
AND FINALLY…….
The success of LostCousins in bringing together members who share the same ancestors is largely the result of our members’ efforts – it’s only because you’ve entered so many relatives on your ‘My Ancestors’ pages, and encouraged so many others to join, that we’ve been able to make so many matches.
Thank you!
The LostCousins 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?