Author: John Reid

Ancestry has completed an early name index of the entire US 1950 census based on their handwriting recognition technology. Not all fields have been indexed. While verification through FamilySearch continues, Ancestry was confident enough with the handwriting technology quality to release this early version.

How good is it? Comparing state population totals with the official ones, Ancestry has some states with more, some less. Ohio stands out among the most populous states, missing about one million people.

The census is free to search and view results, including the original census form images.

What are some other interesting results?

Nearly 5% of the population of Vermont and 2% of Michigan’s population were born in Canada.

835,436 US residents were born in the UK.

Just out, the June issue:

Find elusive ancestors — Katherine Cobb shares expert advice for smashing brick walls and growing your family tree.

DNA Family Secrets — We talk to Professor Turi King, co-presenter of the hit family history TV show.

Did your ancestor bunk off? — How to find school attendance records.

First Aid — The origins of a life-saving moment.

Eureka moment — “A DNA test revealed my grandfather’s identity”.

The best websites for aristocratic ancestry, how to trace employment records, using habitual drunkards registers and more.

Around Britain — Trace your family in the West Riding of Yorkshire.

The OPL catalogue lists four “genealogy” books published in 2022. Two, for children, one not yet available, will not be mentioned further.

Ancestor Trouble, A Reckoning and A Reconciliation, by Maud Newton, from Random House

Extracts from some of the published reviews

“If Newton’s attempts to connect with the past are unusual, her clear-eyed look at her ancestors’ complicity is nonetheless a valuable and bracing portrait of one American family tree that we know represents many, many more. This is why we look back, and it’s why genealogy can be so powerful — because the past is still with us, because we can’t change the present until we’ve retraced the path that led us here.
The Washington Post

“With the rigor of a historian and the voice of a mystery writer, Newton pulls the reader into a philosophical exploration of trauma and heritage. . . . A magisterial memoir.”
The Observer

Published on 29 March, OPL has 31 holds on 4 copies of the book, 14 holds on 2 copies of the eBook, and 9 holds on 1 copy of the audiobook.

The Match, by Harlan Coben, from Grand Central Publishing

Extracts from some of the published reviews

“richly drawn characters and suspense . . . make a satisfying thriller . . . The ending and switches in perspective in particular feel a bit more thrown together than expected, and Coben’s signature second twist comes a bit out of left field . . . will keep readers turning the pages to the very end.”
New York Journal of Books

After signing up to an ancestry website, his DNA is matched to a second cousin and later with a man who is possibly his father. As Wilde follows up these links, he is left with even more questions about his past. . . An enjoyable enough tale but the manifest danger did not quite deliver.”
Mike in Goodreads

Published on 15 March, OPL has 261 holds on 45 copies of the book with 6 available as express reads, 156 holds on 16 copies of the eBook, and 60 holds on 16 copies of the large print book.

Choose from free online events in the next five days. All times are ET except as noted. Those in red are Canadian, bolded if local to Ottawa or recommended.

Assume registration in advance is required; check so you’re not disappointed.

Tuesday 3 May. 2 pm: Virtual Genealogy Drop-In, from Ottawa Branch of OGS and The Ottawa Public Library.
https://ottawa.ogs.on.ca/events/

Tuesday 3 May. 2:30 pm: Spotlight on….40 Years and Still a One-Name Society – The story of the Braund One-Name Study, by Janet Few and Chris Braund for the Guild of One-Name Studies.
https://one-name.org/braundsociety/

Tuesday 3 May. 7:30 pm: Scotland From Abroad: The Next Level, by Bob Dawes for Durham Region Branch OGS
https://durham.ogs.on.ca/

Wednesday 4 May, 7 am: Spotlight on ..Oxfordshire DNA and Surname Projects, by Richard H. Merry, Sue Honoré, and Jessica Feinstein for the Guild of One-Name Studies.
https://one-name.org/oxforddnasurnames/

Wednesday 4 May. 2 pm: Quickly Organize Your DNA Matches with the Leeds Method, by Dana Leeds for Legacy Family Tree Webinars,
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/quickly-organize-your-dna-matches-with-the-leeds-method/

Wednesday 4 May,  7:30 pm: St. Joseph’s – The Cantin Family and the French Settlement, by Marc & Pauline Cantin for Huron County Branch OGS
https://huron.ogs.on.ca/

Thursday 6 May, 6:30 pm: Continuing Use of the Genealogical Proof Standard and DNA as Power Tools in Your Research, by John Beatty for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/6533717

Thursday 5 May, 7 pm: Genealogy for Sale: Researching in Auction Houses, by Daniel Horowitz for OGS.
https://ogs.on.ca/zoom-meetings/daniel-horowitz-genealogy-for-sale-researching-in-auction-houses/

Friday 9 May, 2 pm: McMasters’ Will: The Scheme That Made Us Virtually Free, by Calvin Dark for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/mcmasters-will-the-scheme-that-made-us-virtually-free/

Saturday 7 May, 5-7 am and 9-11 am: Virtual Family History Fair for East Surrey FHS, with participation by various other societies.
https://www.eastsurreyfhs.org.uk/index.php/virtual-meetings

Saturday 7 May, 10 am: Using Ancestry DNA Thrulines to Power Your Family History Research, by Lesley Anderson for London and Middlesex Branch OGS  
https://londonmiddlesex.ogs.on.ca/events/london-middlesex-branch-using-ancestry-dna-thrulines-to-power-your-family-history-research/

Saturday 7 May, 12:30 pm: FamilySearch: Be a Power User, by Jeannie Vance for Campbell River BC Genealogical Society.
https://www.crgenealogysociety.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/2022-Jeannie-Vance-poster1.pdf

Saturday 7 May, 2 pm: Beginning your Research in Simcoe County, by Nancy Leveque for Simcoe County Branch OGS
https://simcoe.ogs.on.ca/branch-meetings/

Saturday was a good genealogy day.

I’ve been asked why I spent so much time covering new and updated resources on the blog. Additional material comes online at regular and irregular intervals. There are monthly issues of magazines and updates to FreeBMD, annual updates as closure dates for civil registration records are passed. Sometimes news arrives unexpectedly; maybe an organization finished indexing a collection — we may be alerted to it through our subscriptions.

But as I discovered just this past weekend, sometimes updates fly under that routine scan.

As you may recall, I’ve been researching my great uncle Edward Cohen who died in the Great War serving in the British Army. In writing up his story, watch for it in the next issue of BIFHSGO’s Anglo-Celtic Roots, it occurred to me to check again whether his father Maurice had ever become a naturalized British citizen. I’d looked before without success, finding it hadn’t been a priority. Now there was a reference to a detailed application at TNA. So I asked a friend in London to do a lookup at Kew on their next visit.

I found out that the family emigrated to London in 1868 when he was four years old. That’s much earlier than I thought. I knew he had a sister born in Amsterdam in 1867, he was in the 1881 census and married in London in 1878 1887. As I didn’t find him or the family in the 1871 census it seemed emigration would be in the 1870s.  I still can’t locate him or the family in the 1871 census.

His citizenship application was in 1919, so it was closed until 2019. It’s worth keeping and periodically reviewing a list of outstanding facts you’d like to discover.

 

On Thursday, 12 May, from 1 to 2:15 pm, Stacey Barker, Tim Cook, Jeff Noakes, and Michael Petrou from the Canadian War Museum will offer an in-depth examination into Canadian lives forever changed by the Second World War in a free Zoom event. The session is moderated by Mélanie Morin-Pelletier.

Find out more and register at https://www.warmuseum.ca/event/short-stories-second-world-war/.

Michael Petrou and Mélanie Morin-Pelletier are both speakers at the OGS/Ontario Ancestors conference 2022.

New UK and Ireland collections “on the horizon” for Ancestry.

Edinburgh, Scotland, Alien Registers, 1794, 1798-1825

UK, World War II Photographs, 1939-1945

UK, Women’s Royal Naval Service Records, 1917-1919

Edinburgh, Scotland, Lord Provost Passports, 1845-1916

Sussex Parish Registers

Westminster, England, Militia Records, 1757-1828

The Bristol Parish collection will be adding additional years.

Additions elsewhere are also coming to Ancestry. For Canada, they are:

Web: Canadian Headstone Index, 1840-2017
Canada, Newspapers.com Obituary Index, 1800s-current

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

Celebrate May Day.

Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation, by Maud Newton 
An acclaimed writer goes searching for the truth about her wildly unconventional Southern family–and finds that our obsession with ancestors opens up new ways of seeing ourselves.

The British Library’s top 10 most unusual collection items

Arolsen Archives’ #everynamecounts Project Uses Artificial Intelligence to Help Uncover Information on Victims of Nazi Persecution
An interesting project — makes one ask, what are LAC’s plans for handwriting recognition? The 1931 census?

Ancestry adds UK and Ireland vitals indexes from newspapers.com
For marriages (2,495,690 records) and obituaries (8,653,927 records). These are OCR records so expect errors, like a person marrying two different spouses on the same day.

US 1950 census update
The MyHeritage and Ancestry searchable indexes both currently contain all records from Alaska, American Samoa, Delaware, Guam, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Panama Canal Zone, Rhode Island, South Dakota, US Virgin Islands, Vermont, Wyoming, Indian Reservation Schedules, and four overseas islands of Canton, Johnston, Midway, and Wake.

Thanks to this week’s contributors. Anonymous, Brenda Turner, Colleen Murray, Glenn Wright, Michelle Landriault, N.D.M., Teresa, Toni, Unknown

Another amazing month for the British Newspaper Archive, now with a total of 50,585,003 pages online (49,829,385 last month). That blows past 50 million with the fourth-best month since January 2020.

This month 148 papers had pages added (240 in the previous month). There were 29 (54) new titles. Dates range from 1827 to 1995.

The 18 newspapers with more than 10,000 pages added are

Title	Years
Civil & Military Gazette (Lahore)	1929, 1935-1938, 1946-1951, 1954-1961
Tonbridge Free Press	1871-1896, 1898-1962
Sydenham, Forest Hill & Penge Gazette	1873-1894, 1905-1939, 1946-1949, 1951-1962
St. Pancras Gazette	1866-1939
Nottingham and Midland Catholic News	1908-1911, 1913-1934
Runcorn Weekly News	1988, 1991-1994
Kilmarnock Standard	1982, 1984, 1990, 1994
Kensington News and West London Times	1876, 1882, 1887-1888, 1913, 1917-1918, 1920, 1922, 1925, 1927-1928, 1930-1934, 1938-1939, 1944, 1950, 1952-1954, 1957-1962, 1965, 1967, 1970-1971
Evening News (Waterford)	1899-1914
Cleveland Standard	1908-1953
Bury Free Press	1960-1967, 1970-1973
Edinburgh Evening News	1925, 1927-1928, 1930
Paisley Daily Express	1882, 1887-1888, 1890-1893, 1989
Woodbridge Reporter	1869-1900
Daily Record	1992
Loughborough Echo	1952, 1986, 1994-1995
Harrow Observer	1965, 1981, 1993, 1995
Buckinghamshire Examiner	1971, 1984, 1994-1995

Much as we’d like the opportunity to be there in person, who wouldn’t want to enjoy their Vancouver Island environment, there’s an open invitation to join a group of enthusiastic Campbell River genealogists to Zoom and learn about FamilySearch. The event is free online, so no travel is required.

A pdf preprint of the article Newfoundland and Labrador: A mosaic founder population of an Irish and British diaspora from 300 years ago is posted in BioRxiv. The lead author, Edmund Gilbert, is well known for his studies of geographic distribution and linkages from DNA data.

Analysis of 1,807 Newfoundland and  Labrador individuals shows English ancestry is predominant except for Irish in the south and south-east. A genetic bottleneck exits approximately 10 to 15 generations ago.

These findings are consistent with the isolation of outports and known genealogical evidence. The comparative genetic data to establish DNA connections to French (and Spanish?) settlers is not available, nor is that of the indigenous populations.

125 million! With 124,218,791 records total in this collection! It must be new to Findmypast (FMP) and the 125 rounding the industry-standard promotion rhetoric.  Who’s counting! 

As we know from the British Newspaper Archive project, one of the aces FMP holds is its relationship with the British Library. That’s to the fore as they acknowledge working “in partnership with the British Library” on this project.

Here’s FMP’s description.

“These records are mostly from the 2021 electoral registers, along with the regular suppression list. It’s an excellent resource for researching current history, discovering more about the social landscape, or gathering data on your local area. These records will often give you a name, an estimated age, an address and years occupied. For many of us, these will be some of the first records we can find ourselves in.”

For living people you’re looking for, this sounds great. How good is it, you ask me? Will I find people related to me?

I’ll answer the second question first. I have relatives and friends one would think would be included and are long-term at the same address. The first listed is in the one location from 2002-14 with no information later. Another, in a nearby village, is there from 2016-22; and another in four of the years between 2002 to 2016.

I got different results for more distant relatives, ones I’m not in touch with. One was only listed twice, each for a single year at different addresses. There was no sign of a family of four male siblings, three born in Wiltshire and one in Berkshire in the 1950s and 60s. Maybe they left the country without telling me!

So what’s the answer to the first question?

Hit and miss.

Can Ancestry do any better? They have UK, Electoral Registers, 2003-2010 with 65,218,309 records. So no. The Ancestry collection is smaller and covers a more limited period.

MyHeritage has no comparable collection, nor does TheGenealogist.

Also, this week FMP makes available the US 1950 census images with partial indexing as performed by the US National Archives. FMP is not working on a complete transcription or enhanced name index.