This updated collection contains 570 records, sourced from TNA ADM 318, for those who served as Officers in the Women’s Royal Navy Service (WRNS) from 1917-1919.
Most records are handwritten in English on pre-printed forms. Records may include application forms, enrollment forms, certificates of identification, and officer’s forms.

Information from the sometimes over 100 imaged pages per record may include:

An episode of Active History podcast, hosted by Sean Graham.

https://activehistory.ca/2023/01/nazi-prisoners-of-war-in-canada-whats-old-is-news/

Nathan M. Greenfield, author of Hanged in Medicine Hat: Murder in a Nazi Prisoner-of-War Camp and the Disturbing True Story of Canada’s Last Mass Execution, talks about POW camp 132 in Medicine Hat. The podcast discussed how the camp came to be, the prisoners’ relationship with the local community, the internal culture that developed at the site, the Nazi influence in the camp, and the murder of two prisoners, and the resulting trial and execution.

For more, you can read Nathan’s editorial “When was it Unjust to Kill Seven Nazi Soldiers? When it Happened in Canada”

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

The Welsh National Book of Remembrance
A decorative book recording the name, rank, service/regiment and residence community of Welsh servicemen and women, who died in the First World War. It is now available through Ancestry with 36,835 records.

Fathers Have Been Older Than Mothers For 250,000 Years

Libraries and Virtual Reality

Thanks to Artificial Intelligence, You Can Now Chat with Historical Figures: Shakespeare, Einstein, Austen, Socrates & More
Beware the rabbit holes under “Related content”

AI Isn’t Inevitable, by Dan Gardner

Thanks to this week’s contributors: Anonymous, Brenda Turner, gail benjafield, Glenn Wright, Kim, Nick Mcdonald, Teresa, Unknown.

The following is a press release from TheGenealogist.

TheGenealogist adds 1831 Irish Tithe Defaulters and
more Irish Parish Registers

TheGenealogist has today released 371,400 Kildare Catholic Parish Registers covering 323,923 records of baptisms, 46,914 marriages and 563 burials to make it easier for its Diamond subscribers to discover their Irish ancestors from this eastern part of Ireland.

Also released at this time are more than 29,000 individuals recorded as Irish Tithe Defaulters. These records from 1831 can be a useful stand-in for the 1831 Irish census which was almost completely destroyed in 1922.

Tithes were levied on all occupiers of agricultural land, no matter their religion, and the Roman Catholic population of Ireland resented paying these tithes to the Church of Ireland (the Established Church) on top of often supporting their own priests.

Refusal to pay the tithes came to a head in the years 1831 to 1832, beginning what is known as the ‘Tithe War’ in Ireland. To alleviate the Church of Ireland’s shortfall The Clergy Relief Fund was established in 1832 by the Recovery of Tithes (Ireland) Act 1832. This provided the affected clergy compensation in return for providing the government with the names of the defaulters.

Many of the non-payers named were ordinary folk such as labourers, farmers and widows who would most likely have been Roman Catholics and so not part of the congregation at their local Church of Ireland parish church, but surprisingly there are also Magistrates, Peers of the Realm and even Knights.

These new releases, now available to all Gold and Diamond subscribers of TheGenealogist will be a welcome resource for those family historians wanting to research their Irish ancestry.

Read TheGenealogist’s featured article: Can’t Pay or Won’t Pay – The Tithe Defaulters

The Globe and Mail is running a series on Canada’s broken freedom-of-information regimes. The latest is Thanks to Canada’s broken access-to-information system, we have to look abroad to understand our own history, by respected historians Robert Bothwell and John English.

Genealogists and family historians should stand up and make our dissatisfaction known, alongside our historian colleagues. They’re the ones who compile the social history we use to help us understand our ancestor’s life and times. Together with historians and social scientists of all stripes who also need archival and library records, we must advocate for changes for the benefit of all.

What are the concerns I hear from our communities?

There are the same concerns about the closure of records. You have to weave a tortuous way to being granted access to a World War II service file. Let’s not even dwell on the 1950 US census being released in 2022 while we wait for the 1931 census of Canada until later this year.

Where records are available the archives should have flexible opening hours beyond 9-4 on weekdays. Some people have day jobs meaning that, in practice, there is no access for them. Limited hours can mean overnight stays or multiple trips for others who must travel to access records.

Our community has a direct interest in the digitization of the 95% (+/-) of archival records not already online. Facilitating access to records in this way would benefit those who cannot visit an archives of interest. Could further digitization, with adequate finding aids, not be promoted by the OGS and peer organizations?

In addition, the community might usefully advocate for making records full-text searchable. Although far from perfect, OCR technology continues to improve. Some organizations are demonstrating workable hand-writing recognition technology which can only improve.  Ancestry did that for the 1950 US census.

Government organizations may not be funded for that, but it shouldn’t stop them from seeking out partnerships to make searchable records available on a commercial basis as long as free access to the original is not compromised.

As illustrated by the Bothwell/English article, Canada has overly restrictive regulations for access compared to other countries. Access to information legislation, especially at the
federal level, seems to be more of a hindrance than a help. Government records, some created much more than fifty years ago, are not being released in a timely manner. Legislated time limits for formal requests are too often meaningless.

As the largest genealogical/family history society in Canada, OGS is well placed to speak for our community interests, if not lead.

Anticipating adverse weather, the BIFHSGO meeting on Saturday, 14 January, is online only, free and open to all.

Register HERE

9:00 am – 10:00 am:  Education Talk
Scotland’s Places for Family Historians – Presenter:  Robert Urquhart
The ScotlandsPlaces website (www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk) combines data and historical records from National Records of Scotland, Historic Environment Scotland and the National Library of Scotland.  As well as providing key information on specific places and administrative units (like parishes, counties and burghs), it allows free access to 17th and 18th century tax rolls.  Robert will give practical examples of how genealogists can get the best out of the site.

Robert Urquhart first worked as an archivist in the west of Scotland.  He joined the National Archives of Scotland in 1999, where he was part of the project team which created the ScotlandsPlaces website.  Later, he became Head of Digitisation at National Records of Scotland.  Today, he runs a palaeography transcription and teaching business (www.abbotshall.net).  His research interests include early modern Scottish-Dutch connections and Scottish parish boundary revisions in the 19th and 20th centuries.

10:00 am – 11:30 am:  Feature Talk
Untangling Family Thickets:  Cornwall to Canada – Presenter:  Wesley Johnston
Families in a locality can be like thickets, full of intermarriages over multiple generations, making for a complex familial landscape.  Wesley will show how putting these families back together yields deep insight into their lives and the choices they made – and doing it successfully requires a solid research method.  He will present case studies of St. Blazey in Cornwall, Columbus in Ontario, and the voyages that connected them.

Wesley Johnston began family history when he inherited the Johnston Family Bible (dating to 1861 in Pickering Township, Canada West).  He is historian and webmaster of the U.S. 7th Armored Division Association and founding president of the American WWII Association Historians Consortium.  His books are available on Amazon.  His website is www.wwjohnston.net.

Do you have a missing distant relative? Ancestry had added a partial index to the available NZ civil registration which means a search without specifying the country may find them there.

New Zealand, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1840-1902, 1,946,022 entries.
The index gives the name, birth year, and parents’ names(with no maiden name of the mother) and a registration number. As birth information is embargoed for 100 years, expect another 20 years.

New Zealand, Civil Registration Stillbirth Index, 1901-1942, 73,925 entries.
The index gives the last name, names of parents (no maiden name) and a registration number. Information is embargoed for 50 years.

New Zealand, Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1840- 1901,  286,218 entries.
The collection index includes the full names of both partners, the year it occurred and a registration number. As New Zealand marriage records are accessible to the public 80 years after the event occurred, expect an update.

New Zealand, Civil Registration Death Index, 1840-1972,  1,354,473 entries.
The index gives the name, age, approximate birth year, death year and registration number.

If you know an event occurred in NZ a better source is the official government website at https://bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/ where you can search a wider range of dates and order  certificate for $25NZ, about $21.33 Cdn. There’s also access via FamilySearch and MyHeritage.

A two-day Time Team Expedition explores a Roman Sarcophagus in Oxfordshire.

Day 1

Day 2

Search Time Team on YouTube for more content from previous episodes reedited.

Editor Sarah Williams marks the magazine’s 200th issue by sharing her favourite ways to grow your family tree.

Rosemary Collins introduces Transcription Tuesday taking place on 31 January 2023. This year’s four projects are:

• Get To Know Medieval Londoners: Medieval property records
• Civil War Bluejackets: Navy records from the American Civil War
• FamilySearch: British merchant ship crew lists (more information coming soon)
• Parkside Asylum: Lunatic asylum records from Cheshire

Bryce Evans recounts the story of the thousands of British Restaurants set up during the Second World War feeding hungry Britons on the Home Front.

Jo Thompson outlines the professionalisation of nursing in Britain, and the varied records that are available

Jonathan Scott rounds up the essential online resources to help uncover house history.

Legal historian Rebecca Probert talks you through researching the marriage of nonconformist ancestors

Nick Peers explains how to search the records of the newly released 1921 census of Scotland online.

And much more, including Jonathan Scott on the wide range of sources for those researching in the North Riding of Yorkshire.

Do you know someone looking to work at Library and Archives Canada?  Here is evidence of LAC action to meet the backlog in ATIP orders (although not in the short term).

LAC – Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) Branch seeks staff at the PM-03 – ATIP Analyst, and PM-04 – Senior ATIP Analyst level. Salary is in the range  $65,547 to $77,378. Closing date: 18 January 2023 – 23:59, Pacific Time.

Further information here.

This is one of six staffing ads LAC currently has posted here.

FamilySearch announced new names for its flagship Family History Library located in Salt Lake City, Utah, and all family history centers worldwide. The library will now be known as the FamilySearch Library, and all family history centers will now be FamilySearch centers … more.

A rose by any other name …