27 January 2006 LostCousins Newsletter
Newsletter - January 2006
CONTENTS
* Search the 1901 Census index free!
To visit the main LostCousins site please go to www.LostCousins.com
What a great start to 2006 - at the current rate there will be more ‘lost cousins’ found in January than in November and December combined!
Do you know why? It’s because LostCousins members have been following our advice, and entering more and more relatives from the 1881 Census. The information on your ‘My Ancestors’ page is like a snapshot of your family tree at a moment in time - and the wider the spread of the tree, the more likely it is to overlap with the trees of other members.
Now is a particularly good time to broaden your family tree because for the next three weeks you can search the 1901 England & Wales Census index free of charge! See below for more details.
Though some of London’s worst slums were demolished during the reign of Queen Victoria, many survived well into the 20th century, as this extract from a documentary film made in 1935 shows:
An outstanding description of life in the slums of south London between 1909-13 was published as “Round About a Pound a Week” by Maud Pember Reeves (1865-1953).
She and her colleagues collected information about the income and expenditure of working-class families living in Lambeth, where the mother of the family had to house, clothe, and feed an entire family with perhaps 5 or more children out of a housekeeping allowance of about one pound a week. First published in 1913 the book was republished 66 years later, and has since been reprinted many times:
In case you’re wondering how much a pound then is worth now, we used the calculator at http://www.eh.net which indicates that it’s about 63 pounds (or $110) in today’s money.
Life was no better in other city slums. In 1971 Robert Roberts, who had been born in a Lancashire slum in 1905, wrote “The Classic Slum - Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century”:
Despite the deprivation in the cities, people still flooded in from the countryside as mechanisation reduced the demand for agricultural labour. The percentage of the workforce employed on farms dropped dramatically during the 18th and 19th centuries, and this declined continued through the 20th century. Once 75% of the population were involved in agriculture - today it’s just 1%.
A new website set up this month received over 3 million hits in 5 days! The Surname Profiler website allows you to see how the distribution of your surname across Britain changed between 1881 and 1998.
The study, carried out by a team led by two professors from University College London, shows that most of the migration to London after 1881 came from Scotland, Norfolk, the North West, and South East. It would be interesting to extend the study back further to discern earlier patterns.
http://www.surnameprofiler.org
Over the Christmas period LostCousins members were competing to win 1000 pounds worth of prizes.
The FIRST PRIZE of 500 pounds in cash went to Lisa Kadir in Western Australia. Lisa is one of our earliest members, joining in September 2004, around the time of our official opening. Lisa won by encouraging 21 of her friends and relatives to join LostCousins - and we know that at least one of them has already found a ‘lost cousin’. Well done Lisa!
There were 50 RUNNER-UP prizes of a year’s subscription to LostCousins. The runners-up were:
Australia: Candy Bridge, Brian Seddon, Dianne Garrett, Alastair Honeybun, Yvonne Erett, Carrie Meerten, Margaret Butters, Angie Beck
Canada: Jo-Anne Gannon, Dorothy Blais, Nancy Magnusson
Ireland: Frank Delamere
Italy: Annette Shepley
Malta: Val Gregory
New Zealand: Rita James, Ham Baxter
South Africa: Stephen Hayes
Spain: Dawn Orobio
UK: Maureen Walters, Frances Bunyan, Gerard Lodge, Cynthia Warbrick, June Trueman, Margret Coppinger, Nina Jenkins, Tony Mitchell, David Calladine, Rosemarie Raines, Rosalind Dunning, Valerie Hepworth, Janet Watson, Anthony McCormack, Jan Hardware, Ruth Cotton, Gloria Lynch, Suzzanne Tilley, Dave Boyce, Jacqueline Tiernan, Debbi Smith, Sandra Hughes, Janet Cook, Marissa Chaplin, Carolyn Passey, Janet Wood, Brenda Marley, Pauline Priestley, Susan Heys
USA: Debra Roach, Dortha Steele
It was decided to award an extra prize of 100 pounds to Maureen Walters, who came a close 2nd in the competition - well done Maureen!
Congratulations to the winners and a big Thank You to everyone who entered. We hope that you’ll continue using your ‘My Referrals’ page to tell your friends and relatives about LostCousins.
SEARCH THE 1901 CENSUS INDEX FREE!
Once again Ancestry.co.uk are offering all family historians the opportunity to search the 1901 England & Wales Census index completely free of charge. Although you won’t be able to view the scanned census pages, you will be able to find out who else was living in each household, and you’ll discover the precise page reference so that you can look it up on microfilm.
The link below will take you straight to the 1901 Census page at Ancestry.co.uk (you may be asked to enter your name and email address):
In your research you’ll eventually come up against a ‘brick wall’ - so wouldn’t it be great if there was someone who could help you out when this happens?
There is! We have a large team of ‘buddies’ who have volunteered their time to help other LostCousins members. It’s amazing what a difference it can make just to have a fresh pair of eyes looking at the evidence you’ve collected!
Currently over 60 of our buddies are available to provide assistance - perhaps one of them can help you?
This is a free and confidential service available to all LostCousins members. The information you send us will only be seen by the buddy who is assisting you - and they’ll only be told your first name, not your surname or email address.
Email info@LostCousins.com with the words ‘Help wanted’ as the subject. Tell us what you know and what you’re trying to find out, and we and our buddies will do our very best to help!
We’ve updated the links on the ‘My Links’ page. Let us know what you think of the sites based on your personal experience, and give them a rating out of 10 - this will help other members decide which sites to visit. If you haven’t yet visited a particular site select ‘Not visited’.
Is there a site that you think should be added to this page? If so please tell us about it! Email info@LostCousins.com with ‘My Links’ as the subject.
We’ll shortly be replacing the existing 5-generation Ancestor Chart with a 6-generation version. To download a blank chart just click here:
http://www.lostcousins.com/pages/info/lostcousins_chart.pdf
You can use the chart to collect information or as a way of checking for gaps in your research. It’s also a useful source of the Ancestor Numbers for your direct ancestors - entering these on your ‘My Ancestors’ page makes it much easier for us to give you help and advice.
AND FINALLY......
Have you ever used the Genes Reunited site? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they could match you up with your ‘lost cousins’ automatically, like we do? Can you imagine how much better it would be if 100% of their so-called ‘hot matches’ were people who really did share the same ancestors as you?
Now imagine if all their members joined LostCousins! You’d have the best of both worlds - an enormous membership combined with a highly efficient, incredibly accurate, automated matching system.
In fact our system is so much more efficient that we could produce more matches with a mere twentieth of their membership! If you’re a Genes Reunited member have you ever considered telling other members about LostCousins? Maybe you should!
The LostCousins Team
http://www.LostCousins.com
info@LostCousins.com
© Copyright 2006 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?