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This Week’s Online Genealogy Events

Moving into September, the selection of events is picking up.

Choose from these selected free online events. All times are Eastern Time, unless otherwise noted. Registration may be required in advance—please check the links to avoid disappointment. For many more events, mainly in the U.S., visit https://conferencekeeper.org/virtual/ .

Tuesday, 1 September

2:00 PM: Ottawa Virtual Genealogy Drop-In, by OGS Ottawa Branch. https://ottawa.ogs.on.ca/genealogy-drop-in-live/

2:30 PM: Genealogical Myths: Legends, Lies, and Lineage, by Michael Traynor for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/17120821

Wednesday, 2 September

3:00 AM: Top 5 Free Websites for Western Australia Family History, by Shauna Hicks for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/top-5-free-websites-for-western-australia-family-history

10:00 AM: Using AI to Answer the Big Three: What, Where, and Why of Ancestor Locations, by Diana Elder, for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/using-ai-to-answer-the-big-three-what-where-and-why-of-ancestor-locations

11:30 AM: Top 5 AI Tools for Transcribing Handwritten Historical Documents, by Nicole Elder Dyer for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/top-5-ai-tools-for-transcribing-handwritten-historical-documents

1:00 PM: Using AI to Analyze Land Records and Reconstruct Family Narratives, by Thomas MacEntee for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/using-ai-to-analyze-land-records-and-reconstruct-family-narratives

7:30 PM: Gothic Huron: Heroes, Rogues, Murders, Daring, Bawdy Houses and Other Tales, by David Yates for OGS Huron Branch. https://huron.ogs.on.ca/events/huron-branch-gothic-huron-heroes-rogues-murders-daring-bawdy-houses-and-other-tales-david-yates/

Thursday, 3 September

7:00 PM: FNMI: The Indigenous Peoples of Canada, by Lianne Kruger for OGS Monthly Webinar.
https://ogs.on.ca/september-webinar-fnmi-the-indigenous-peoples-of-canada-lianne-kruger/

Friday, 4 September

2:00 PM: U.S. Great Lakes Region Accreditation: A Genealogical Treasure Trove, by Kaye Ford, for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/u-s-great-lakes-region-accreditation-a-genealogical-treasure-trove

Saturday, 5 September

10:00 AM: Tips, Tricks & Tools for Historical House Research, by Eleanor J. Rath for OGS London and Middlesex Branch.
https://londonmiddlesex.ogs.on.ca/events/london-and-middlesex-branch-tips-tricks-tools-for-historical-house-research/

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FreeBMD August Update +

The FreeBMD database was updated on Thursday, 27 August to contain 296,256,811 unique records, up from 296,061,731 last month.

Years with more than 10,000 additions are: 1994-96 for births, 1995-96 for marriages, 1994 and  1996-97 for deaths.

Over 400 unique birth records were added for 1894 and 1910.

Ancestry updated the Sheffield and Rotherham, Yorkshire, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1950 collection on 20 August, now with 1,868,708 records.

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Sunday Sundries

Miscellaneous items I found interesting this week.

Art & Paintings Jigsaw Puzzles
From 9 to 500 pieces.

The Strangest Unusual Crimes That Actually Happened in Canada

TheGenealogist London Additions

Registers from London parishes devastated by the Great Fire of 1666, together with important historical works. The parish and church records include:
● St Stephen Walbrook and St Benet Sherehog, 1557–1789
● The Registers of St Mary Woolnoth and St Mary Woolchurch Haw, 1538–1760
● The Registers of All Hallows, Bread Street and St John the Evangelist, Friday Street, 1538–1892
● Registers of St Vedast and St Michael, 1558–1837
● The Registers of St Edmund the King and Martyr, Lombard Street, 1670–1812
● London Temple Church Records: Register of Burials, 1628–1853
● Dutch Reformed Church, Austin Friars: Certificates of Membership and Marriages, Confessions of Guilt and Betrothals, 1568–1872
● Churchyard Inscriptions of London, 1624–1894, containing abstracts of memorial inscriptions from more than 50 City of London churches, recording names, family relationships and burial details that may no longer survive on the original stones.
The historical works are:
● The Old Churches of London – An extensively illustrated history of the City’s churches, with drawings, engravings and photographs exploring their architecture and appearance, including churches that stood before the Great Fire and those rebuilt in its aftermath.
● Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, Volumes I–IV – Pepys’s remarkable first-hand account of life in Restoration London, providing a contemporary view of the streets, people and everyday life of the capital, together with his celebrated eyewitness account of the Great
Fire.
● Old and New London, Volumes I–VI – A richly illustrated history of London’s streets, neighbourhoods, churches and landmarks, tracing how areas changed over time and frequently recording what stood there before the Great Fire and what replaced it afterwards.

Thanks to the following individuals for their comments and tips: Anonymous, Gail, Teresa, and Unknown.

 

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Findmypast Weekly Update

A London-heavy week on Findmypast, with four new or updated record collections covering marriages, burials and wills across the capital and beyond.

Surrey, Southwark Marriages and Banns

Digitised in partnership with Southwark Archives, this new collection covers parish marriage and banns registers from the London Borough of Southwark — historically part of the county of Surrey, situated south of the Thames. The registers span Anglican, Baptist, Congregational and Methodist congregations from areas including Bermondsey, Borough, Camberwell and Peckham, and cover primarily the 19th and early 20th centuries. Records can include the names of bride and groom, marriage date and place, age, marital status, occupation, residence, and father’s name. Each result provides both a transcript and a digital image of the original document.

Greater London Burial Index, 1399–1992

This collection — now over three million records — covers burials across the Greater London area across nearly six centuries. Drawing together the Middlesex Burials & Memorial Inscriptions, South London Burials Index, City of London Burials, and Middlesex Burials, it includes more than 300 parishes with both Anglican and non-conformist burial grounds. Records can reveal name, age, occupation, religious denomination, and place of burial.

London, Archdeaconry Court of London Wills Index, 1549–1807

This index covers 4,687 surviving wills proved in the Archdeaconry Court of London between 1700 and 1807, with the collection title extending back to 1549. The court had jurisdiction over roughly half the parishes in the City of London, as well as populous Middlesex parishes including St Leonard Shoreditch, Clerkenwell, and St Botolph Aldgate. Records include the testator’s name, parish of residence, occupation, and year of will. Original documents are now held at the London Metropolitan Archives.

Cumberland Burials

A welcome addition for those researching northern English ancestry, this collection of 240,525 burial records was provided by the College of Arms and includes transcripts and original index images. Records typically include first and last name, burial year and date, place, residence, and archive reference.

Newspapers

This week’s update adds 261,444 pages across six new titles and updates to 25 existing publications.

New Titles

Title Location Date Range
Comet (Dublin) Dublin, Ireland 1831–1833
Eastern Bengal and Assam Era Dhaka, Bangladesh 1907–1914
Nenagh Guardian Nenagh, Tipperary, Ireland 1838–1880
Rushcliffe Advertiser Nottinghamshire, England 1890–1895
Times of India Bombay, India 1910–1938
Monmouthshire Chronicle Lydney, Gloucestershire 1875–1877

Updated Titles with Over 10,000 Pages Added

Title Date Range
London Evening Standard 1900–1919
Staffordshire Sentinel 1997–2005
Downpatrick Recorder 1865–1878
South Wales Echo 2003
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Ask AI: More on Cousin Counts

The summary response was: TL:DR: For a person born in England and Wales in 1945, the estimated kinship network in their own generation is approximately 2 siblings (range 0-6), 13 first cousins (range 0-30), 115 second cousins (range 20-250), and 1,160 third cousins (range 200-3,000).

Then I prompted to “Please double check your estimates in responding to my initial prompt.”

The summary reponse was: TL:DR: A rigorous audit of my original demographic model reveals that while the mathematical logic was sound, I made a terminological slip in the text and used rounded fertility inputs that created a compounding overestimate for distant cousins. The refined, data-accurate point estimates are 2 siblings, 12 first cousins, 100 second cousins, and 975 third cousins.

The corrected values are well within the range of variation in the initial response.

Compare that to the three-child family scenario of  2 siblings, 12 first cousins, 72 second cousins, and 432 third cousins.

To the query about sources of variation, Gemini responded.

“Demographic averages mask massive individual variance. The ranges above are vast due to the following factors, listed in priority order of their impact on the final numbers:

  • Variance in Reproductive Success: Family size often follows a negative binomial distribution. A single ancestor having 12 children who all survive to reproduce will exponentially blow up a cousin network, while a branch experiencing childlessness immediately terminates that line of descent.

  • Childhood Mortality & Nuptiality: Historical fertility rates measure live births, but not all children survived to reproductive age. For the 1825 and 1855 cohorts, infant mortality in England and Wales was notoriously high (often 150+ deaths per 1,000 births). Furthermore, a significant percentage of adults never married or had children (up to 15-20% in some Victorian cohorts).

  • Social Class and Geography: The demographic transition (the shift from high to low fertility) hit different groups at different times. Middle-class professionals in Southern England began limiting family sizes decades before manual labourers in the industrial North or rural Wales. A person descending from a line of coal miners would likely have a significantly larger kinship network than someone descending from a line of London clerks.

  • Endogamy and Pedigree Collapse: In rural or highly tight-knit communities, cousins often married one another. If a person’s great-grandparents were second cousins, the number of distinct ancestors drops, which mathematically reduces the number of unique third cousins in the present generation.”

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MyHeritage adds Irish Dog Licence Records

MyHeritage has released an extensive collection of over 8.1 million Irish Dog Licence Registers (1865–1926). These records provide a valuable workaround for Irish census gaps before 1901 by placing ancestors at specific townlands and addresses year-by-year, while also recording details about their canine companions.

The first licences were issued in 1866 for a fee of 2 shillings per dog, plus a sixpence stamp on the registration certificate. The licence was issued through the Petty Sessions system. The first year alone reportedly generated about 354,000 licences, the human population that year was 5.5 million.

The number subsequently averaged roughly 250,000 licences a year.

Depending on the year and jurisdiction, entries typically record the full name of the dog owner, not the dog, exact address and townland, county, date of licence issue,  number of dogs registered, breed or type, sex, and colour of the dog.

The system changed in 1926 with the establishment of the Irish Free State,  and again in 1987 and 2012. Those later records are not in this collection.

For over a decade, Findmypast has included an Ireland Dog Licence Registers collection, now with 7,358,407 records. They are now in the Ancestry collection too.

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FamilyTreeWebinars.com Launches Learning Paths

Learning Paths packages are guided mini-courses made up of 3–6 expertly selected sessions on a given topic.  Compiled from the Family Tree Webinars library of 2,700+ genealogy webinars, more than 100 paths are available covering a wide range of subjects, including:

DNA — from the basics of testing to advanced analysis techniques
Artificial intelligence — how AI tools can support genealogical research
Methodology — core research skills and problem-solving strategies
Records — deep dives into specific record types and how to use them
Places — location-focused research, from regional archives to local history
Ethnicities — research strategies tailored to particular ethnic and cultural groups

Preview the Learning Paths at https://familytreewebinars.com/learning-paths. You can also build your own custom path, track your progress, earn completion certificates, and share paths with genealogy societies, family members, or fellow researchers.

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FamilySearch Updates English Parish Records: Devon, Shropshire, Northumberland

On 21 August 2026, FamilySearch added or updated over 4.3 million indexed entries across Devon, Shropshire, and Northumberland. All three collections are freely accessible via the FamilySearch Historical Records search engine, with links to the handwritten register images directly from the transcribed indexes.

Devon Bishop’s Transcripts, 1558–1887
Count: 803,171 records, 1,735,020 personas, 93,511 images
Source: Devon Record Office.

Shropshire Parish Registers, 1538–1922
Count: 884,807 records, 2,141,787 personas, 62,913 images
Source: Shropshire Record Office.

Northumberland Parish Registers, 1538–1950
Record Count: 2,703,315 records, 6,731,835 personas, 280,015 images
Source: The Woodhorn Museum and Northumberland Archives.

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This Week’s Online Genealogy Events

Choose from these selected free online events. All times are Eastern Time, unless otherwise noted. Registration may be required in advance—please check the links to avoid disappointment. For many more events, mainly in the U.S., visit https://conferencekeeper.org/virtual/

Tuesday, 25 August

2:00 PM: Exploring the Record Matches System at MyHeritage, by Alina Khuda for Legacy Family Tree Webinars. https://familytreewebinars.com/upcoming-webinars/

2:30 PM: What Gravestones Can Tell You About Your Ancestors, by Genealogy Center staff for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center. https://acpl.libnet.info/events

Wednesday, 26 August

1:00 PM: How to Handle Duplicates and Intermarried Cousins in Your Family Tree, by Crista Cowan for Ancestry Virtual Event Series. https://www.ancestry.com/c/discover/education

2:00 PM: Women’s Suffrage: Their Rights, Roles, and Limitations, by Michael L. Strauss for Legacy Family Tree Webinars. https://familytreewebinars.com/upcoming-webinars/

Thursday, 27 August

Friday, 28 August

2:00 PM: 10 Notable Migrations in the Black Diaspora, by Diane Warmsley for Legacy Family Tree Webinars. https://familytreewebinars.com/upcoming-webinars/

Saturday 29 August

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Weir(d?) Times at Library and Archives Canada

  • Vision 2030. In June 2022, LAC revealed “the strategic plan that will chart its course for the rest of the decade.“Our vision is based on the following statement: Discover. Understand. Connect. While the collections remain central to our identity, the ability of users to discover, understand and connect with the collections will guide the services we provide.

    With Vision 2030, we want to:

    • facilitate access to diverse and inclusive collections
    • raise awareness of these collections among as many people as possible so that everyone can discover and understand them
    • bring people together around the stories behind Canadian experiences, cultures, communities and history.”

How are they doing?

A document posted on 30 July 2025 promised “Each year, LAC will assess whether Vision 2030’s key goals still reflect the changing environment and the needs of users. Progress toward these goals will be reported on annually.”

Where’s the report? How will the changing environment, especially developments in artificial intelligence capabilities, impact on how the goals are to be achieved.

In requesting this type of report from LAC previously, I’ve been told they will be incorporated within others, notably the annual Departmental results report. I look forward to reading whether LAC “use(d) of 100 percent clean electricity by 2025.”

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Ask AI: Cousin Count

In the latest Family History AI Show episode, Mark Thompson said “these (AI) tools are no longer bad at math.”

Here’s a consistency check. Each AI was prompted exactly with. “In a family tree where each person has two siblings how many siblings, first, second and third cousins of the same generation does each person have?”

Gemini and Claude returned that each person has 2 siblings, 12 first cousins, 72 second cousins, and 432 third cousins.

ChatGPT initially counted only one side of the family when calculating first cousins.  Asked to check its calculation it apologized and gave the same answer as the other two.

Gemini provided a formula. For any degree of cousin n where each person has s siblings family size k = s + 1 children:

Count of nth cousins = 2^n * s * k^n.

Please don’t take this as the correct answer, and especially don’t take it as representative. All families don’t have three children who lived to have three children, and so on.  Families are getting smaller. There’s a geographical and cultural bias in family size. The calculation assumes no pedigree collapse.
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Families: August 2026

Volume 65, Number 3 of the OGS Quarterly publication is online for members. Contents are:

From Parish to Petition: Tracing Scottish Families through the Caledonian Asylum Records, 1819–1924, by Lorna Kinnaird
A Mini Case Study: John McLennan of Lochiel and Roxborough, by Bev MacCulloch
STIGMA – An Abridged Version – Keffer Essay Contest 3rd Place, by Wendy Smith
The History of William Airth (c. 1815-1880) – Keffer Essay Contest 4th Place, by Jeff Airth
Swiss Cheesing: Stacking weak evidence into a strong DNA case, by Drew von Hasselbach
The Sackville Family of Hamilton, Ontario, by Jared James Nathan
Leaving Their Mark: The Dingmans of Cramahe, Northumberland, Ontario, by Rob Stieglitz
Mute Words, Living Voices: The Letters of Henry Giles, 1842-3, by Graham Segger,
REGULAR COLUMNS
What’s in a Name? The Trend to be Unique, by Robbie Gorr.
Coral’s Corner, by Coral Harkies.
Book Review: The Hop-Picker Murders (A Genealogical Crime Mystery) by Nathan Dylan Goodwin, reviewed by Heather Oakley
Book Review: AI for Genealogists by Natalie Webb, reviewed by Art Taylor.

Browsing through the issue, I was struck by the benefits of OGS membership advertised.
MyHeritage Library Edition — free
Canadian Association of Retired Persons (CARP) — half off a one-year digital membership ($10).
Discount of $5 on membership of AGS, BCGS, BIFHSGO, MGS, SGS.
Legacy Family Tree Webinars — half off for first-time subscribers.
JSTOR Access – $50 off.
International Institute of Genealogical Studies — $7 each course when purchased in a package of six.
Family Tree Maker Software — $52 off.

https://childthemewp.com