3 January 2006 LostCousins New Year newsletter

Newsletter - New Year 2006

CONTENTS

* 1841 and 1851 Scotland censuses coming soon!

* Are YOUR details in ‘My Details’

* Who will carry on your research?

* Hints and tips: searching the 1881 Census

* 5 days to win 500 pounds!

To visit the main LostCousins site please go to www.LostCousins.com

As this is the first LostCousins newsletter of 2006 we’d like to wish you a Very Happy New Year!

Our New Year’s Resolution is to find as many ‘lost cousins’ as we possibly can during the next 12 months - but we’re going to need your help.

Why? Because we can only work out which of our members are your ‘lost cousins’ if there is at least one relative that you have BOTH entered.

We’d suggest that if you’ve entered less than 100 relatives on your ‘My Ancestors’ page you enter as many more as you can. Most members who have already found ‘lost cousins’ have entered at least 100 relatives, and it’s a target well within reach for anyone whose ancestors were living in Britain in 1881 (in fact, one resourceful member has entered over 1600 relatives!).

We’ll give you whatever assistance we can to help you find those missing relatives - just write to info@LostCousins.com with “Help wanted” as the subject.

And if you’ve already entered more than 100 relatives, but unfortunately have yet to find your first ‘lost cousin’, we’d be delighted to review your entries, and make specific recommendations that will improve the odds.

Thanks to the efforts of LostCousins members there were nearly 10 times as many ‘lost cousins’ found in 2005 as in 2004. We already know that 2006 will be better still!

1841 AND 1851 SCOTLAND CENSUSES COMING SOON

It has been announced by Scotlandspeople that the 1851 Scotland census will be added to the site later this month, and the 1841 census next month. This means that within two months ALL of the published censuses of Scotland will be available online!

If you really can’t wait, remember that around half of the 1841 entries have already been indexed at the FreeCEN site (http://www.freecen.org.uk).

ARE YOUR DETAILS IN ‘MY DETAILS’?

If you haven’t recently visited your ‘My Details’ page you may not have noticed that several new entries have been added. Please log-in at http://www.LostCousins.com and take a few moments to verify that the information you’ve entered is up-to-date and as complete as possible.

Every month hundreds of emails are returned because members have changed their email addresses - and as a result some of those members have missed out on ‘lost cousins’. You can now enter an additional email address for use in emergencies - we’ll only use it if emails to your main address are returned. Another safeguard is to enter your postal address.

The forename and surname that appear on your ‘My Details’ page are what your cousins will see when contact has been made. Some members have entered initials rather than names, but it’s more courteous to show your forename and surname in full. (It also looks better when the first letter of each name is capitalized.)

WHO WILL CARRY ON YOUR RESEARCH?

Would you believe that 87% of family historians have never seriously considered what will happen to their research when they are no longer able to continue it themselves? Wouldn’t it be a shame if all your hard work was lost?

Late last year we introduced a new entry on your ‘My Details’ page: ‘Account Inheritor Email’. This is where you can enter the email address of the person you’d like to take over your LostCousins account when the time comes - to ensure that your cousins are properly informed of the situation, and that the work you’ve put in is not lost.

So much valuable genealogical information has been lost by previous generations - let’s see if we can do better!

HINTS & TIPS: SEARCHING THE 1881 CENSUS

Have you ever really struggled to find a family on the census? Sometimes the names are mis-spelt, the ages are out, and even the birthplace is shown incorrectly. How can you possibly cope in a situation like that?

Here are some tips that you may find useful (no doubt you’ll already be familiar with some of them):

TIP #1: Enter the minimum of information when you’re searching - just one small difference could stop you finding the record you’re looking for.

TIP #2: Look for the youngest children - because their ages are most likely to be shown accurately. But be wary of searching for children who were under one year old at the time of the census, because 6 weeks or 6 months is sometimes transcribed as 6 years.

TIP #3: Focus on the less common forenames. Names such as Walter and David are not rare, but they are a lot less common than John, William or Mary.

TIP #4: Search for names that are less likely to have been shortened, mis-spelt, or replaced by a nickname. For example, Frances might appear as Francis, Fannie, or Fanny.

TIP #5: Have a map to hand so that you can see which villages and towns are close together; often the name of the village where someone was born appears on an early census, but the nearest town on a later one. For contemporary maps visit http://www.old-maps.co.uk

TIP #6: When you search the 1881 Census at Ancestry.co.uk you can often find someone who is proving elusive by specifying their occupation in the ‘Keywords’ box, and omitting their surname.

TIP #7: You can use the ‘*’ symbol as a wildcard when searching at Ancestry - but you must specify at least the first three letters. Don’t just use wildcards when entering names - you can use them for places too.

TIP #8: The rules whether middle names and initials should be shown varied from census to census, but most enumerators seem to have ignored them anyway. It’s usually best not to specify a middle names or initial when searching, but it can be a handy pointer when you’re sifting through the results.

TIP #9: When searching the 1881 Census at FamilySearch site it’s rarely a good idea to tick the ‘Use exact spelling’ box.

TIP #10: At FamilySearch you can search for two people - the head of the household and one other. Sometimes you can find a badly transcribed entry by searching for two forenames and leaving the surname box completely blank.

Finally - when all else fails - ask us for help! Just email info@LostCousins.com and explain who you’re looking for.

5 DAYS TO WIN 500 POUNDS!

Would you like to win 500 pounds in cash? You could buy 50 birth, marriage or death certificates, take out an Annual subscription to Ancestry.co.uk, buy 500 units at FamilyRelatives, and still have enough left to buy a professionally-printed family tree from Genealogy Printers!

Or would you perhaps choose to travel First Class from London to Paris on Eurostar, stay three nights in a luxury hotel, and spend the rest on wonderful food and wines?

To enter just use your ‘My Referrals’ page to tell your friends and relatives about LostCousins. Each one who registers using the allocated referral code, then logs-in before midnight (London time) on January 8th will receive one month’s free subscription - and take you closer to winning the biggest prize we’ve ever offered.

With a week to go the competition leader had made 16 successful referrals - surely not a difficult target to beat when such a generous prize is on offer? Those of you who belong to family history societies, mailing lists, or forums must be in with a chance!

Remember, there are 50 runners-up prizes of a free one-year subscription to LostCousins - so even if you don’t win the top prize your time is unlikely to be wasted. Just 2 or 3 successful referrals could be enough to win you a runners-up prize.

Will you be one of our winners? It’s so easy to make a referral using your ‘My Referrals’ page! And if there’s anyone you’ve referred in the past who hasn’t registered yet, just click the ‘Send Reminder’ button alongside their entry.

Note: in the event of a tie for any prize, the person who has made most referrals since joining LostCousins will be declared the winner; the other rules of the competition were in our December newsletter (if you’d like a copy please email info@LostCousins.com).

AND FINALLY........

We get emails from members occasionally saying that they’ve “researched back to the 1700s, so the 1881 Census is of no interest”.

It’s important to remember that we use the 1881 Census ONLY as a way of working out which of our members share the same ancestors. Whilst some of our members are beginners, the majority have researched much further back - some as far as the 13th century!

The further you go back, the more ancestral lines there are to investigate - so isn’t it even more important to find ‘lost cousins’ with whom you can pool your efforts?

Once again, we wish you all the best for 2006!

The LostCousins Team

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?