Month: October 2022

Repeating an earlier post that became corrupted.

The UK, Wartime Records and Material, 1914-1918, 1939-1945 collection, just added by Ancestry, is from the IWM’s holdings of wartime materials, including films, photographs, and maps, as well as newspapers, journals, and other miscellaneous printed materials, such as tickets, leaflets, and posters.

There are 5,143 items in the Ancestry collections so far. More are likely to be added.

The image above is one of six hits searching the word Canada, found because the caption mentions the large number of Bomber Command crew who were Canadians. You’re unlikely to find a family member mentioned, very likely to find an image to illustrate a UK wartime activity.

If you have a Fold3 subscription, you now have convenient access to search the 1,349,366 records in the Second World War era London Gazette military notices.

These record military awards or commendations, reports of people leaving service due to illness, appointments, promotions, and other military matters. Information may include:

• Name
• Rank
• Regimental number
• Occupation
• Military dates of service
• Commendation dates
• Regiment
• Unit

The records are freely avaiable at the Second World War section of the London Gazette at https://www.thegazette.co.uk/all-notices/notice?sort-by=latest-date&end-publish-date=1945-09-02&start-publish-date=1939-09-01

Searching on Fold3 may reveal mentions of the person in other sources.

 

An opinion piece under the above headline, by well-known access researcher Ken Rubin, ran in the Hill Times. It has the sub-head summary “It’s an agency that’s too secretive, slow in disclosures and supportive of record destructions, that’s also falling behind in declassifying Canada’s historic records.”

The remainder of the article is behind a paywall, but thanks to an Ottawa Public Library subscription, here are a few lightly edited snippets.

Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez … declined to put forward a strategic plan to quickly correct LAC’s laggard and disgraceful access-to-information record.

LAC has fallen in line with the centralized secrecy commands in their dislike to giving Canadians access to their records on a timely and fuller basis.

It would help if LAC, who holds the vast majority of government historical records, gets going in declassifying more records for release.

LAC badly needs to change course and become an independent record manager … a champion for the fulsome and quick release of federal information.

Those who have waited for years to obtain a simple WW2 service file will heartily agree. Sadly Leslie Weir, the current Librarian and Archivist of Canada, appears unable or unwilling to act to uphold the LAC legislated mandate.

The British Newspaper Archive now has a total of 58,888,233 pages online (an increase from 57,484,010 last month).

This month 147 papers had pages added (87 in the previous month). There were 18 (22) new titles. Dates range from 1827 to 1999.

The 19 newspapers with more than 10,000 pages added are:

Name	Years
Derby Daily Telegraph	1888, 1898, 1951-1956, 1958-1970, 1973-1975, 1977-1979, 1981-1982, 1984-1985
Bristol Evening Post	1952-1962, 1966-1969, 1975, 1980
Official Gazette of British Guiana	1893-1919
Hull Daily Mail	1951-1966, 1971
Hinckley Times	1889-1897, 1899-1914, 1916-1925, 1927-1933, 1936-1942, 1945-1949, 1951-1952, 1954-1964, 1966-1981, 1983
Torbay Express and South Devon Echo	1926-1933, 1935-1936, 1947, 1955-1956, 1973, 1977, 1980
Staffordshire Sentinel	1859, 1861-1862, 1885-1886, 1952-1956, 1958-1959, 1961-1963, 1981-1985
Nottingham Guardian	1887, 1897, 1901, 1903, 1955-1958, 1964-1971
Sunday Sun (Newcastle)	1928, 1960-1961, 1963-1965, 1968-1975, 1977, 1979-1983
Scunthorpe Evening Telegraph	1942, 1993-1994, 1999
Leicester Daily Mercury	1927, 1996
Aldershot News	1945-1949, 1952-1953, 1955-1957, 1959-1961, 1963-1967
Royston and Buntingford Mercury	1994-1996
Ormskirk Advertiser	1995, 1997-1999
Manchester Metro News	1993-1994, 1996
Staines Informer	1995-1997
Sandwell Evening Mail	1985
Southport Visiter	1994-1996
Sleaford Target	1994-1996
Dumfries and Galloway Standard	1952, 1995-1996
Salford Advertiser	1994-1996
Cambridge Daily News	1998
Stockport Times	1994-1996
Eastern Argus and Borough of Hackney Times	1877-1912
Abergele & Pensarn Visitor	1994-1996

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

Family Stats from MyHeritage
Which of your relatives lived the longest? What is the average age of your relatives at marriage?  Are there first names that are most common in your family? Did you know that there’s a handy free section of the MyHeritage website that can tell you all of this, and much more, if you have a free family tree on MyHeritage?

TheGenealogist launches fully searchable copies of 3,129 editions of The Times from the 1870s for Diamond subscribers. Further decades to be released in the coming months.

Photo Colourization with Colour Adjustment

Irish Genealogy News
I don’t follow developments in genealogy of the island of Ireland as much as Great Britain or Canada. That’s partly because I don’t have much Irish ancestry, AncestryDNA disagrees, mainly because Claire Santry does such a good job at Irish Genealogy News.

If you registered for the BIFHSGO conference, the end of the month is the last time you can access the presentation recordings and handouts. Don’t miss the last opportunity.

Canada, McGill University Honour Roll, 1914-1918
The 3,078 entries list graduates and students from McGill who died due to service and those who served.  Many of the entries include photographs. The source is a publication available in original form from the Internet Archive.

Not at Findmypast but available at http://www.archives.mcgill.ca/public/exhibits/mcgillremembers/search.htm is a collection of index cards documenting the involvement of McGill faculty, students, alumni, and staff in the war effort (1939-1945).

Historical Society Of Pennsylvania, Births & Baptisms
Over 20,000 births and baptisms have been added to this collection from Indiana County.

Also, the regular updates to the British Newspaper Archive, available through Findmypast, will be included in the end of month update.

There’s 20% off subscriptions or upgrades to Findmypast until the end of the month.

If your family tree includes burials at Broadwater or Durrington Cemeteries in Worthing, Sussex, England, check out the 46,594 records in this MyHeritage collection from the year 1908 onwards.

Records include the name of the deceased, date and place of burial, and may include the year of birth and date of death.

Broadwater Cemetery, which is closed to further burials, includes 81 interments under the care of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, including two who served with Canadian forces.

Durrington Cemetery, which mostly dates from 1928, has 60 CWGC burials.

The Adur and Worthing Council provide a free website with the same information with that for the past 10 years withheld.

On Thursday, there were over 120 thousand additions to the deceasedonline.com collection:
Merridale Cemetery, 115,530 records from 1850 to 1993
Danescourt Cemetery, 4,628 records from 1959 to 1989
Beacon Hill Cemetery, 4,470 records from 1960 to 1992

The records comprise digital scans of the full burial and cremation registers up to 1989 and a mix of grave and index register scans thereafter, section maps showing the location of the grave for most records, and grave details for each of the graves and their occupants.

Merridale is called Wolverhampton Borough Cemetery in the CWGC records and has military war 200 burials, one Canadian.

Other records for the area coming soon to Deceased Online are

Bilston Cemetery, 64,600 records from 1855 to 1993
Bushbury Cemetery, 19,973 records from 1949 to 1994
Bushbury Crematorium, 75,023 records from 1954 to 1988

 

This MyHeritage addition contains British transportation registers which cover the full period of convict transportation to Australian territories from 1787 to 1867. Records for 123,888 convicts typically include the name of the prisoner, date of transportation, the ship’s name, and the date and place of conviction, if available.

The transcripts are sourced from the Digital Panopticon that links UK and Australian records, including for later periods.

The findings in the article Where Do Cultural Tastes Come From? Genes, Environments, or Experiences in the journal Sociological Science are:

“family background explains more than half of the total variance in cultural tastes and participation and in omnivorousness. Moreover, family background operates mainly via shared genes, with shared environments shaping cultural tastes to some extent, but not cultural participation.”

“MZ (monozygotic) twins are more similar than DZ (dizygotic) twins are with regard to cultural tastes, participation, and omnivorousness in music and reading.”

It’s the time of year again when those responsible for assembling society meetings look at blank spaces in their calendars. Who has a presentation topic that would appeal to the membership and is a good knowledgeable speaker?  Undiscovered talent is particularly welcome; so is the tried and true. Your presentation proposal could make the meeting organizer’s day!

ConferenceKeeper.org has a section for societies seeking speakers, some of them ongoing.

Kim Barnsdale for OGS/Ontario Ancestors is currently leading their process, accepting proposals for their monthly 2023 Webinar Series. Live webinars take place on the first Thursday of the month at 7pm ET using the Zoom platform.

Topics of Interest 
Proposals on a wide range of topics are sought. The top subjects from the 2023 Webinar Topic Survey are:

Land Records
Immigration
Genetic Genealogy
Research in Ancestor’s; County of Origin
Technology &Tools
Comparison of Genealogy Websites

Selected speakers need to be prepared to provide Ontario and/or Canadian specific examples in  their presentations as applicable.

Submissions
Speakers may submit up to 3 proposals for consideration. All submissions will be reviewed but only those who are chosen will be contacted. All submissions will be reviewed and only those who are selected will be contacted by December 1, 2022.   If you have any questions, please contact: Kim Barnsdale at webinar@ogs.on.ca

To submit your proposal please follow this link: https://ogs.on.ca/webinar-submissions/ DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS:  November 18, 2022 at 11:59pm ET

Compensation 
Those chosen speakers will receive an honorarium for their webinar presentation.