Anglo-Celtic Connections

Another success for genetic genealogy. You probably saw the story Human remains found in Algonquin Park 45 years ago identified thanks to the work of a genetic genealogist using autosomal DNA evidence. It’s just the latest in a long line of autosomal DNA-aided remains identified.

The Department of National Defence, Casualty Identification Program use of DNA and other techniques, is explained here.

“The Casualty Identification Program typically uses mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) to identify remains, which is passed unchanged from mother to child. Mitochondrial DNA survives well and is very stable over many generations, but its stability may also lead to similar profiles in people who are not closely related which can sometimes create false positives. Even with its limitations, mtDNA is a very useful tool that can help to establish parentage that goes back many generations.

The Casualty Identification Program also uses a type of nuclear DNA called Y-chromosome short tandem repeat (Y-STR). Y-STR DNA is passed from father to son and is genetically stable, but does not survive well in skeletal remains. Unfortunately, some samples from the remains do not provide a Y-STR sample that is suitable for comparison, which means this method cannot always be used.”

With autosomal DNA analysis now a well-established forensic technique, what’s holding our Department of National Defence back from doing all they practically can to identify military remains?

I woke early to a blog post Essential tools for genealogy byTeresa on her writing my past. blog. I found some interesting-looking tools that are new to me.

Her list, was inspired by  Linda Shufflebean’s more AI-oriented Essential Tools for Today’s Genealogical Research Success,

Both merit this shoutout and have been added to my long to-do list. 

Over half a million British clergy records were recently added to TheGenealogist.

From 1890 to 1952, the collection brings together:
● Crockford’s Clerical Directories (1904, 1923, 1927, 1933): the definitive reference work for the Anglican clergy, providing detailed biographical information, appointments, and career histories of Church of England ministers across the country.
● Ministers and Probationers of the Methodist Church (revised to August 31st, 1952): providing both chronological and alphabetical lists of ministers and probationers from the Wesleyan, Primitive, and United Methodist branches. Users can explore details such as years of entry into ministry, service in various circuits, duration of appointments, and leadership positions, including Presidents, Vice-Presidents, and Secretaries of Conference. An alphabetical list of deceased ministers completes this comprehensive resource.

Also, there is the London Diocesan Clergy Succession, tracing the spiritual leadership of London from the earliest times up to 1898. This work records bishops in chronological order, with extensive notes on consecrations, nominations, elections, and service dates.

Search for other sources for these records.

There’s been a lot of buzz lately about Nano Banana, Google Gemini’s latest photo editing facility. It’s free. Find it at https://gemini.google.com/app/. If 2.5Pro is not your default, select it, then click Tools and choose Create Image (located beside the banana logo).

I tried it for colourizing a photo of my great-grandmother. It did so almost instantaneously.

Were her cheeks really that rosy at age 90?

An article Restoration is Silently Erasing Our History arrived in my inbox overnight. The thrust is that AI photo restoration tools, while impressive, carry inherent biases from their training datasets. The tools impose modern Western characteristics and potentially alter original features like skin tones rather than simply enhancing photos. This stems from biased training samples dominated by the Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic “WEIRD” demographic. Also, more young people. The result? A skewed understanding of human diversity gets embedded in AI systems, causing restored photos to rewrite rather than merely restore historical images.

As with the colourized image above, an AI logo may be added to the altered image. AI is here to stay. There’s no going back. Watch for the AI logo and realize you’re getting a somewhat distorted view of the original.

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 conferencekeeper.org.

Tuesday, 2 September

2 pm: Ottawa Virtual Genealogy Drop-In, for OGS Ottawa Branch
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86956419387

2:30 pm:  How the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center Makes
Local History Accessible Online, by  Kristen Merryman for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/14272866

7:30 pm: Turning Genealogy Clues into Genealogy To-Do’s, by Thomas MacEntee for OGS Durham Branch
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/wGXkSb9YQCaez-8e9B4BFQ

Wednesday 3 September

5 am: Ancestors on the Margins: tracing misfortunate ancestors in Britain, by Janet Few for Legacy Family Tree Webinars
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/ancestors-on-the-margins-tracing-misfortunate-ancestors-in-britain/

WEBTEMBER: Germany

10:15 am: Finding Your Ancestors in German Directories by Ursula C. Krause
Wed, Sep 3, 2025:  EDT
11:30 am: Exploring Mecklenburg’s Rich History and Genealogical Treasures, by Andrea Bentschneider
12:45 pm: German Genealogy: Latest and Greatest Websites and Tools, by James M. Beidler
2:00 pm: The Emperor’s New Code, by Ute Brandenburg
3:30 pm: Eight Little-used Published German Sources, by Warren Bittner
Register individually and see the full Legacy Family Tree Webinars Webtember program at https://familytreewebinars.com/upcoming-webinars/

7:30 pm:  Breaking down Brick Walls – The GPS Approach, by Janice Nickerson for OGS Huron Branch.
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwsdOyspj8vGtGAAVzTiUSCBUYUSj5vIR4j

Thursday, 4 September

7 pm: An Ever Growing Tree: Descendancy Research and DNA Matches, by Kate Penney Howard for OGS Webinar Series
https://ogs.on.ca/september-webinar-an-ever-growing-tree-descendancy-research-and-dna-matches-kate-penney-howard/

Friday, 5 September

Saturday, 6 September

10 am: How Genealogy informs Local History – and Vice Versa, by ”London and Middlesex Branch, by Lorraine Tinsley for OGS London & Middlesex branch.
https://londonmiddlesex.ogs.on.ca/events/london-and-middlesex-branch-how-genealogy-informs-local-history-and-vice-versa/

 

 

If you can use it, it doesn’t get any better than this!

Findmypast announces ‘biggest offer ever’, with 50% off one-year subscriptions!

Included is access to the digitized newspaper collection, which is a duplicate of the British Newspaper Archive.

Pay, and save £99, about $185 Canadian, for a 12-month subscription.

Today, you can be one of the first to register for the BIFHSGO virtual conference Researching the Disadvantaged of England and Wales, being held on 18 and 19 October 2025.

The conference registration fee ($ 35 for members, $ 50 for non-members) includes presentations from seven expert speakers, who, collectively, have published 47 books. They know their stuff. There will be an Expert Connect Q&A session with some of the speakers, as well as the opportunity to review recorded presentation videos and handouts until November 30, 2025.

Find all the details at https://www.bifhsgo.ca/2025-conference

 

The FreeBMD Database was updated on Friday, 29 August 2025, to contain 293,913,757 unique entries.

Years with more than 10,000 additions are: 1993-96 for births, 1994-96 for marriages, and 1994-97 for deaths.

It has been a while since I presented a comprehensive profile of the unique BMD registrations for England and Wales in the FreeBMD database.

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

Times are not so Great

Google Ngram shows a dramatic decline in the frequency of use of the word “great,” overtaken by “small” in 1970 and “little” in 1980. Little surpassed small in 2008.

Quebec, Canada, Notarial Records, 1637-1935
 Ancestry updated the collection on 29 August to contain 16,529,462 records.

Droughts don’t just dry up water — they drain livelihoods and weaken local economies

Deadline for OGS Presentation Proposals
To my friends with expert genealogical knowledge, a reminder that the Call for Speakers deadline for 2026 presentations for OGS provincial talks online is Monday, September 15. Details at https://ogs.on.ca/webinar-submissions/

America is a Gun

England is a cup of tea.
France, a wheel of ripened brie.
Greece, a short, squat olive tree.
America is a gun.

Brazil is football on the sand.
Argentina, Maradona’s hand.
Germany, an oompah band.
America is a gun.

Holland is a wooden shoe.
Hungary, a goulash stew.
Australia, a kangaroo.
America is a gun,

Japan is a thermal spring.
Scotland is a highland fling.
Oh, better to be anything
than America as a gun.

Brian Bilston

Findmypast has added 5,827 new records to the British Armed Forces and Overseas Deaths and Burials collection, bringing the total to over 2.7 million. These records are a consolidation of over 200 series from The National Archives (TNA) and 29 from the GRO. A related browse collection has also been expanded.

A quarter-million pages have been added to the newspaper collection this week. FMP no longer details these additions, but according to The British Newspaper Archive, the source for FMP, there are five new titles and updates to 11 existing publications.

Titles with over 10,000 pages added this week:

Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is undergoing a significant workforce adjustment, with 70 indeterminate positions being eliminated. This follows earlier measures, including the termination of 90 fixed-term contracts on 31 March. The news, announced via internal email, affects all sectors of the organization.

These reductions are part of a broader trend across the federal government, with other departments such as the Public Health Agency, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Justice, and the Canada Revenue Agency also announcing workforce adjustments. This is the first round of cuts for LAC, stemming from the 2023 budget. Further adjustments are expected as part of the Comprehensive Expenditure Review, which was launched in July 2025.

The 70 cuts represent 6.5 percent of LAC’s total workforce of 1,137 in 2025. LAC’s core public administration staffing in 2025 is at its highest point in a decade, according to Treasury Board data.

The organization chart lists 53 people in senior positions, from Directors to Deputy Minister, which accounts for 4.7 percent of the total workforce. Applying a statistical analysis to these numbers, if cuts were applied evenly across all positions, there would be a 97 percent chance that at least one of the 53 senior positions would be eliminated. For the top 13 positions, from Director General and above, there is a 56% chance that one or more will be cut.

The federal public service, particularly professions like librarians and archivists, tends to have an older demographic with many employees nearing retirement age. This has led to speculation that this cohort may absorb a larger portion of the reductions, with concomitant loss of corporate memory.

These reductions will likely impact LAC’s operations and services, such as addressing the ATiP backlog and opening Adisoke.

Ancestry and FamilySearch have just updated their  Find a Grave® Index collections. FamilySearch has a total of 258,483,538 records, while the actual Find A Grave site boasts “Over 250 million memorials.”

For Ancestry, the breakdown in the table below totals 75,696,187 records. There’s no update yet for the (Dis?)United States of America, with 183,680,528 records, at the Find a Grave site.

Title	Records
Canada, Find a Grave® Index, 1600s–Current	11,637,307
UK and Ireland, Find a Grave® Index, 1300s–Current	22,951,145
Germany, Find a Grave® Index, 1600s–Current	4,337,400
Australia and New Zealand, Find a Grave® Index, 1800s–Current	12,383,977
Brazil, Find a Grave® Index, 1800s–Current	206,723
Norway, Find a Grave® Index, 1800s–Current	240,879
Global, Find a Grave® Index for Burials at Sea and other Select Burial Locations, 1300s–Current	22,261,342
Mexico, Find a Grave® Index, 1800s–Current	90,789
Sweden, Find a Grave® Index, 1800s–Current	1,159,419
Italy, Find a Grave® Index, 1800s–Current	428,206