Anglo-Celtic Connections

Here are the most recent monthly updates at newspapers.com for England and Wales. The Evening Standard and Guardian are extending into 2023. At the bottom of the list is the only newly added paper to the collection, the Alsager Chronicle with just 26 pages added for 1989.

Newspaper	Community	Pages	Year Range
Evening Standard	London, Greater London, England	2,371,507	1897-2023
The Guardian	London, Greater London, England	1,125,387	1821-2023
Evening Post	Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England	521,834	1878-1999
Huddersfield Daily Examiner	Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, England	390,156	1871-1999
South Wales Echo	Cardiff, South Glamorgan, Wales	218,870	1983-1999
The North Wales Weekly News	Colwyn Bay, Clwyd, Wales	126,025	1905-1999
Sunday Sun	Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear, England	107,817	1919-2003
Dover Express	Dover, Kent, England	97,675	1858-1999
The Crewe Chronicle	Crewe, Cheshire, England	89,167	1904-1994
Buckinghamshire Advertiser	Chesham, Buckinghamshire, England	66,358	1922-1999
The Huddersfield Examiner and West Riding Reporter	Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, England	64,014	1860-1953
Grimsby Daily Telegraph	Grimsby, Humberside, England	60,717	1899-1932
Wokingham Times	Wokingham, Berkshire, England	57,042	1931-1999
Middlesex County Times	Ealing, London, England	39,880	1866-1941
Newquay Express and Cornwall County Chronicle	Newquay, Cornwall, England	22,317	1905-1945
The Vale Advertiser	Denbigh, Clwyd, Wales	14,649	1992-1999
Nottingham Evening News	Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England	5,966	1889-1911
Huddersfield and Holmfirth Examiner	Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, England	2,508	1851-1860
The Egham and Staines News and Weekly Journal for Ascot, Sunninghill, etc.	Staines, Surrey, England	2,442	1897-1908
Essex, Herts and Kent Mercury	London, London, England	1,772	1837-1843
Essex and Herts Mercury	London, London, England	868	1833-1836
Alsager Chronicle	Crewe, Cheshire, England	26	1989

There are no updates for Ireland, Northern Ireland or Scotland.

Additions for Canada are recent issues of the Province (Vancouver), Leader-Post (Regina), Edmonton Journal, Calgary Herald, Windsor Star, National Post, Gazette (Montreal), and Whitehorse Daily Star.

“… out of some 3 million total documents, at least 78 percent have been scanned – which could mean hundreds of millions of pages total. Yet only 14 percent of the 3 million total, some 433,000 documents, have been checked by an employee and are available to the public online. Five years ago, only 5 percent of the documents were available to the public.”

That’s from a news report Despite Digitalization, Most Israeli State Archives Files Can’t Be Found Online

14 percent online is greater than I’ve seen mentioned for other similar institutions. But the article quotes Israel State Archivist Ruti Abramovitz as saying lack of funds meant the rate at which files could be processed is low, and part of the reason is unwillingness to have politically sensitive files released. Restricting funding helps keep those files under wraps.

The forthrightness of the archivist about making the statistics available is to be admired. Would that ever happen in Canada? It helps that there’s a Knesset Committee looking into the matter. Given the lack of attention to LAC by Canada’s parliamentarians that motivation is lacking.

 

Choose from selected 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. Additional mainly US events are listed at https://conferencekeeper.org/virtual.

Tuesday, 16 May

2 pm: OGS Ottawa Branch Virtual Drop-in.
https://ottawa.ogs.on.ca/events/virtual-genealogy-drop-in-2-2023-05-16/

8 pm: Name Changes and the Law, by Judy Russell for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/name-changes-and-the-law/

Wednesday, 17 May

9 am: Maps for Family and Local History, by National Library of Scotland.
https://t.co/O32PTunGBN

2 pm: Introduction to and Overview of Microsoft PowerPoint – Class 1 of 9, by Seema Kenney for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/introduction-to-and-overview-of-microsoft-powerpoint-class-1-of-9/

7 pm: Saving History, One Stone at a Time at Historic Windsor Grove Cemetery, by Essex County Branch Cemetery Team, for OGS Essex Branch.
https://essex.ogs.on.ca/meetings/essex-branch-presentation/

Thursday, 18 May

Friday, 19 May

Saturday, 20 May

10 am: Show and Tell, by OGS Kingston Branch.
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZElduutrT8iHteo5Y_4ZkQUuNgIpn6eH4oD

11 am: Genetic Genealogy and Ethnicity Estimates, by Dana M. Kelly for The British Interest Group of Wisconsin & Illinois (BIGWILL).
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUkd–sqD8rGdek2iK-kkFoYOSYMFenz_ep

1 pm: Getting Ready for the 1931 Census, by Dave Obee for OGS Quinte Branch. 
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0sce2qrDgrGtAAtSQ8NVPuZoJEK7aHLY-B

 

If you’ve tried it, how did you react to seeing a deceased ancestor able to move using MyHeritage’s Deep Nostalgia™ ?

Some think it’s weird and freaky. It’s understandable at first — watch the reactions in this video by Danielle Romero.

Then reflect, if she’d just come across and viewed an old home movie of her ancestor, wouldn’t she likely react in pretty much the same way?

On 8 May 1941, Harvard 2884 crashed, killing instructor B.L. Duffey and Australian trainee D M Lord at a location 2-1/2 miles south of Ottawa’s Uplands Airport on the farm of Mr. Jervis Craig. The accident was mentioned in my 19 April blog post Ancestry adds Canada, Royal Canadian Air Force Crash Cards, 1939-1945 .

I was interested to pinpoint the location. It seemed unlikely to be exactly due south of the airport, so I started looking for the Jervis Craig farm. Thinking it could be on either side of the Rideau River I looked for him in the 1921 census. He was there on the west (Nepean) side as Gervais Winfield Craig, age 19, a wage earning farmer, eldest surviving son of John and Clara. There was a younger brother, Walter David Craig, age 4.

A record at Find a Grave, also at TONI and Canadian Headstones, showed Gervais W. Craig, birth 10 Dec 1901, death 5 Mar 1983, buried at Our Lady of the Visitation Roman Catholic Cemetery, South Gloucester. That’s on the east side of the Rideau River.

My next step was to consult asessment records for Nepean for 1939, requiring a trip to the Ottawa City Archives. I chose 1939 as there was a newspaper report that he was involved in a traffic accident at Black Rapids that year.  I found the family headed by John and Clara, but no mention of Gervais. His brother Walter David Craig was there with the notation RCAF.

Walter’s service file is available as he died on a bombing raid over Germany. Among the list of siblings is Gervais W Craig, RR 2 Billings Bridge, on the east (Gloucester) side of the Rideau River. I scheduled a trip to back to the City Archives to consult Gloucester assessment records.

In the meantime, it occurred to me to look for a compiled family history. Nothing at Ancestry, FamilySearch or WikiTree, but on MyHeritage there was a Craig family tree with a biography mentioning that “Gervie had a farm on the Limebank Road just north of (Earl) Armstrong Road in Gloucester Twp. The farm was sold to Campeau Homes around 1969 … homes have recently been constructed on this farm as part of Riverside South.”

That would be Lot 20, Con 2 RF of Gloucester Township which is about 3.5 miles from the airport, depending on exactly where you measure to and from.

Family history friend Ken McKinlay, Ontario land record guru, found the Abstract/Parcel Register Book page at https://www.onland.ca/ui/4/books/80337/viewer/454242720?page=67 showing the property came into possession of the Craig family in the 1850s, and was granted to Gervais in 1939 and 1943 for “Nat. love & $1.”

A lesson for me is to begin with the low hanging fruit, compiled genealogies across the range of sites. Even through they often have errors, they can give research a running start before venturing far into original records.

Acknowledgments to Glenn Clark, President of the Gloucester Historical Society for advice on the geographical area of RR 2 Billings Bridge, and Ken McKinlay, who blogs at Family Tree Knots, for untangling me from the puzzles that are Ontario land records.

 

From Border Life, a video on tending to the resting places of people who lost their lives in the First World War. The item starts at around 8 minutes.
https://www.itv.com/news/border/2023-03-15/tending-to-the-resting-places-of-people-who-lost-their-lives-in-first-world-war

See where your home was at the time of the dinosaurs using this interactive map

Public Libraries are Underrated

A story by ChatGPT

Hampshire parish records have been getting lots of attention recently. This week Findmypast added 235,160 baptismal, 208,258 marriage and 239,466 burial records. They are transcripts, with a few exceptions.

Earlier in the year, Ancestry also added Hampshire parish records, including images to the original record.  Here’s how the two compare.

	Ancestry	Findmypast
Baptisms	1,586,354	864,903
Marriages	794,719	556,823
Burials	304,643	1,001,468

FamilySearch has combined collections: Hampshire Bishop’s Transcripts 1680-1892, with 830,884 records, and Hampshire Parish Registers, 1538-1980, with 1,262,246 records.

Don’t overlook TheGenealogist which has a long list of its Hamphire coverage by parish at https://www.thegenealogist.com/coverage/parish-records/hampshire/#includes

As always, another place to look for options is the FamilySearch Wiki at https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Hampshire_Church_Records

Skibbereen Heritage Centre has created an online database of Cork County Council burial registers and Graveyard Surveys at https://skibbheritage.com/west-cork-graveyards-database/.

You can click on a map to get more detail, including a link to the Historic Graves website  with more details and grave images for many of the graveyards.

The Skibbereen Heritage Centre has a database of over 380,000 local records, many available to search free of charge.

Records for Henley Road Cemetery and Reading Crematorium within its grounds, dating from 1927, are now available to view on www.deceasedonline.com . The data comprises digital scans of the original burial and cremation registers up to 1993, with computerized information thereafter, and grave details for each of the graves and their occupants.

Reading records now available on Deceased Online are:

• Hemdean Road Cemetery – 7,311 records from 1877 to 2016 (Originally known as Caversham Cemetery)
• Henley Road Cemetery – 48,583 records from 1927 to 2018
• Reading Old Cemetery – 75,725 records from 1843 to 2017
• Reading Crematorium – 132,942 records from 1932 to 2018

” … researching genealogical records (e.g., examining census records) is associated with greater self-esteem and reduced anxiety but that posting memories about families and expanding one’s family tree do not have the same relation with measures of psychological well-being.”

This is from the article Improving Psychological Well-Being of Young Adults by Conducting Family History Research at a Religious University (BrighamYoung University) published in The Journal of Genealogy and Family History

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