Anglo-Celtic Connections

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, 28 July

2:00 PM: Clusters and Triangulation: Turning DNA Matches into Family Connections, by Loïc Duchamp for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/clusters-and-triangulation-turning-dna-matches-into-family-connections

2:30 PM: Canadian Citizenship by Descent: Genealogy and the
Amended Citizenship Act, by Mike Sainsbury for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/16709797

Wednesday, 29 July

2:00 PM: Mastering Mid-Atlantic Research: Resources and Methodologies for ICAPGen Accreditation, by Alice Childs, AG®, for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/mastering-mid-atlantic-research-resources-and-methodologies-for-icapgen-accreditation

Thursday 30 July – Saturday 1 August

The FreeBMD database was updated on Friday, 24 July 2026 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, and 1996-97 for deaths.

Reviewing the significant

Turn-of-the-Century Birth Peak & Mid-Century Baby Boom: Total births reached an all-time historical peak in 1903 (1,934,153 births) and experienced a prominent mid-century surge peaking in 1964 (954,322 births) before tapering off in the 1970s.

World War I Demographic Impact: Births dropped to a low in 1917 (683,164 births) during WWI, followed by a sharp post-war demographic rebound in 1920 (978,628 births).

World War II & Post-War Marriage and Birth Spikes: Marriages reached an all-time historical peak in 1940 (1,000,178 marriages) at the start of WWII, followed by a post-war birth boom in 1947 (935,118 births).

1918 Flu Pandemic Mortality Peak: Deaths reached an intense local maximum in 1918 (617,529 deaths), reflecting the global Spanish Flu pandemic and late-war mortality.

Lowest Number of Deaths: Remarkably, 8 of the 10 years with the lowest number of deaths were in the 1920s.

The Netherlands and US take the lion’s share of these 180 additions. Two Canadian newspaper titles, 39,495 pages, and five newspaper titles from England, 13,235 pages, all from the 21st century, are added.

Miscellaneous items I found interesting this week.

Chapman and André 1777 map of Essex

Can You Guess?

Need a Modern US Version

Thanks to the following individuals for their comments and tips: Anonymous, Carlos Rivera, Dawn Kelly, Donald Read, Gail, Teresa, and Unknown.

In partnership with the Royal Navy Museums, FMP added four new record sets unique to Findmypast this week.

British Royal Navy, Courts Martial
118 records and 119 images, covering 1912 to 1942.

British Royal Navy, Punishment Books
1,320 records and 509 unique images.

Naval Charitable Societies Subscription and Grant Books
141,880 subscription and grant book records in 5,302 images from a selection of naval charitable societies, spanning 1791 to 1942. 

British Armed Forces, Schoolmistresses and Nurses’ Pensions
1,689 unique records tell the story of schoolmistresses and nurses in the British Armed Forces between 1909 and 1928.

Newspapers
Additions are three new titles and updates to 33 existing publications. The Record, published in London, has editions as early as 1838, good for researching nineteenth-century Anglican clergy, missionaries, teachers, or prominent evangelical families. It can be a rich source of biographical information that is often unavailable in local newspapers.

Feature Articles 

Start Your Family Tree
We challenged Nicola Johnson to trace a family’s story in just an hour a day for a week, using free resources. Here’s how she did it — and how you can do it too!

Lost In Ireland
Dean Kirby on his quest to uncover Irish ancestors, and how to trace your own Hibernian origins

Water of Life: Drinking Fountains
Kathryn Ferry details how free, public drinking fountains transformed welfare in Victorian Britain. It includes a box out for Charles Pierre Melly (1829-1888), a prominent Liverpool businessman and philanthropist. He was the father of the drinking fountain movement. He funded 40 in and around Liverpool. In October 1859 he donated money for a drinking fountain in my old home town of Great Yarmouth and had arranged for the local water company to provide the water without charge.

Series Worth Noting.

BEST WEBSITES
The best online sources for researching forebears who lived on the Indian subcontinent under British rule.

RECORD MASTERCLASS
How to use records of the Prerogative & Exchequer Courts of York to trace northern wills.

AROUND BRITAIN
Essential resources for tracing Warwickshire ancestors.

Three of the top articles from the August 2026 issue of the UK Family Tree magazine.

Pedigrees of Paupers: Analysing class and social mobility in the records.
David Annal examines the topic of social class in family history records, and tells us how to spot the clues that can add an extra dimension to our understanding of our ancestors’ lives.

• Good News
  Eligible non-profit organizations and charities can now book certain LAC spaces at no cost, subject to specific criteria. Space at 395 Wellington, likely the 2nd floor Alfred Pellan Room, restores the free facility of Room 156 that was heavily used before the ground floor space was taken over by Public Works. Two Gatineau locations are also available. Find out more here. Spaces at Ādisōke will become available once the facility is ready.
• Save the DHCP!
  Documenting advocacy efforts to restore LAC’s Documentary Heritage Communities Program.
• Intellectual Freedom: Compliance
  Following up on LAC’s Intellectual Freedom Statement, I requested information on how LAC’s compliance will be measured and reported. According to a prompt response from LAC Media Relations, “LAC does not currently plan to publish a separate public report on the Intellectual Freedom Statement. Rather, progress related to the statement will be reflected through LAC’s existing planning and reporting processes.”
  Specifically, “Progress will be assessed using indicators already tracked through LAC’s existing planning, performance measurement, and monitoring processes, including our Departmental Results Framework and service standards”. Will this be meaningful accountability, or a ticking the boxes exercise?
• Creative Space at LAC
  Every Wednesday, until 19 August 2026, from 9 am to 3 pm, take part in artistic and literary activities at your own pace in the Alfred Pellan Room at 395 Wellington Street. Could this be a trial of the type of programming to be offered at Ādisōke?

This massive collection, now 45,915,080 records, is likely updated as previously embargoed records move into the public realm.

The 1939 Register is a detailed survey of the civilian population in England and Wales during the Second World War, initially taken for ration books and to issue identity cards. It includes notations that give the married name of women originally registered under their maiden name.

Findmypast’s version of the Register lists 36,688,071 records; MyHeritage has 35,119,597 records. Could it be the Ancestry version includes corrections and married names as separate entries?

The summer edition of this magazine from the Irish Family History Centre is out with a new look and a new name. Remembered is dropped from the title.

Contents include:

Producers Star Nathan Lane’s Irish Roots
Eunice Kennedy Shriver: Founder of the Special Olympics
Maritime Pilgrimage of Saint Sionach MacDara, Lord of Tempests
The Jeanie Johnston Famine Ship: The Emigrant Voyage
The MacCarwells and Other Medieval Musical and Craft Families.

When I tried to follow the READ NOW link on Tuesday evening it landed on the previous (Winter) issue. Patience.

Jenny Ashcraft’s article on the Fishwrap blog explains the ten-step process Ancestry uses in bringing us the 1.2 billion newspaper pages on newspapers.com.

Step 2, Customer Requests, states they’re welcome. But the website has no obvious way to send them! Several people have posted requests as comments to the article.

Don’t expect instant gratification. Contract negotiations may mean substantial delay. Content may be unavailable owing to copyright issues. 

Miscellaneous items I found interesting this week.

There is no conceivable way carbon capture and storage can work.

Don’t change lanes – the maths of holiday traffic jams

New from OGS
Early on Saturday, Patti Mordasewicz, Editor, issued the first version of OGS (or Ontario Ancestors if you will) eWeekly Update using new email distribution software. The format is slightly changed, the content remains substantial. Included was an announcement that TONI, The Ontario Name Index, has new content.

The Archive is Not a Toy: The Hidden Problems of a ‘Vintage’ AI

In the final post on the Active History blog before the summer break, Jacob Polay, Chloë Farr, and Jessica Jack review“talkie”—a pre-1930s large language model framed alternately as a forecasting experiment and a historical chatbot. It was trained on documentation from and pre-dating the era.
They blast “talkie” as automating the worst prejudices of the past and demand a complete foundation which includes un- or under-represented groups.
The complete foundation is a myth where records don’t exist. Falling short is letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.  Vintage language models, such as “talkie”, offer an innovative approach to understanding the past, including societal prejudices. While model developers surely have an obligation to be open about the information base used, it is up to the user to appreciate the context.

500 Ironic Stories!

Thanks to the following individuals for their comments and tips: Anonymous, Gail, Julia, Nick Moreau, Paul, Sunday Thompson, Teresa, and Unknown.