Anglo-Celtic Connections

On Sunday 26 June, just 10 weeks away, Wayne Shepheard will present “Natural Phenomena and The Effects on the Lives of Our Ancestors”. A few days ago I had the opportunity to speak with Wayne about the topic and his presentation.

You may also be interested in his blogs https://mothernaturestests.blogspot.com/
https://discovergenealogy.blogspot.com/

and his book

Surviving Mother Nature’s Tests

Before you read the listing of the contents of the new issue, Family Tree invites you to record a story.

What’s in the issue:

Family History News
Tracing Scottish House History
Ten Steps to Finding John Armstrong
Another Brick in Your Wall (full of good advice)
Postcards from the Front (I enjoyed this one)
Murder or Misadventure?
Law and the Family Historian
Old Handwriting Mastered
Twiglets
A Summer to Remember
DNA Workshop
Reclaimed Janes.

Plus there’s a good helping of regular columns.

Over 4,000 Catholic parish baptisms are added to the collection this week, bringing the total number of exclusive records up to 1.2 million. There are both transcripts and images of the original with additional information. Here’s full information about all the records available for the 37 parishes with additions.

Information for 40 Catholic parish marriages is also augmented with nearly 10,000 new records, and also with transcripts and images of the original.

This latest release from TheGenealogist adds the following searchable book records:

Armorial Families, Arms Authorized by The Laws of Heraldry 1863
Boyle’s court guide 1888
Burke’s Handbook to the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire 1921
Burke’s Landed Gentry Volume 1886
Debretts House of Commons and the Judicial Bench 1887
Encyclopedia of Heraldry or General Armory of England Scotland and Ireland 1844
Genealogica Bedfordienses Landed Gentry of Bedfordshire 1538-1700
Grantees of Arms to The End of The XVII Century
Herefordshire Visitation Of 1569
His Majesty the King 1910-1935
Imperial British Calendar 1823
Index Nominum to the Royalist Composition Papers
Kelly’s Handbook To The Titled Landed and Official Classes 1909
Landed Gentry of Bedfordshire 1538-1700
Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica – Third Series Vol IIIV
Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica – Third Series Vol IV
Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica Fourth Series Vol II 1908
Nottingham Visitation 1569 and 1614
Short View of the Peerage of Ireland 1759
Standing Council of the Baronetage Official Roll of the Baronets 1929
Suffolk Visitations of 1561 1577 1612
Sussex Visitations 1530 and 1633-4
The Pedigree Register for London 1907-1915
The Peerage of Ireland 1754
The Royal Kalendar 1786
The Royal Kalendar 1788
The Royal Kalendar 1796
The Royal Kalendar 1804
The Royal Kalendar 1820
Webster’s Royal Red Book Court and Fashionable Register January 1915
Worcestershire Visitation 1569

If you’re interested in this type of resource have a look at Guide to Selected Genealogical Reference Works.

I’m impressed. Using a trademarked technique, SideView™,  Ancestry is estimating the percentages of each ethnicity you inherited from each parent. It’s done based on segment analysis and comparison with your DNA matches; it does not identify which parent is associated with which estimate.

I was pleased to see that my Jewish ancestry was associated with only one parent, that’s something 23andMe got confused with when it originally assessed my father’s ethnic makeup from mine and my mother’s.

Ignoring small amounts of ethnicity where the error bar includes zero, my ethnic makeup is similar for England & Northwestern Europe, and for Scotland for both parents. For my father, Irish ethnicity accounts for about the same percent as my mother’s Jewish ethnicity. The SideView™ estimates for my mother (as I identify) from my DNA are reasonably consistent with the estimates from her DNA results at 23andMe.

The British Newspaper Archives has passed a major milepost, the 50 million page mark.

That came with 76,705 pages added in the past 7 days. What pushed it past the mark? It could have been the Ormskirk Advertiser, Dover Express, Taunton Courier and Western Advertiser, Winsford Chronicle, or Uttoxeter Newsletter.

Do any of those have content relevant to your family history?  You can access all the newspapers as a Findmypast subscriber. I sometimes find the free superior search capability at www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk reveals content I can subsequently read on Findmypast.

As of mid-day on Tuesday MyHeritage is slightly in the lead in the count of US states and territories 1950 census records indexed.

Both Ancestry and MyHeritage have tackled the same ones first. Ancestry is indexing more fields, notably occupation.

A quick reminder that records are continually added at FamilySearch. Here are the indexed UK and Ireland collections updated or added in the past week.

Here are collections of unindexed images added this month.

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.T

Tuesday 12 Apr. 2 pm: Virtual Genealogy Drop-In, from Ottawa Branch of OGS and The Ottawa Public Library.
https://ottawa.ogs.on.ca/events/

Tuesday 12 Apr. 2 pm:  Recording Memories on the MyHeritage Mobile App, by Daniel Horowitz for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.   https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/recording-memories-on-the-myheritage-mobile-app/

Tuesday 12 Apr. 2:30 pm: 1950 Census: How do I search for my family? by Allison Singleton for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/6440543

Tuesday 12 Apr.  7 pm: What I Learned about Genealogy During the Covid Lockdown, by Debra Honor, for Essex Branch OGS. https://essex.ogs.on.ca/meetings/essex-branch-april-presentation/ 

Wednesday 13 Apr. 7:15 pm: Growing Up Yonge – Part One the 19th Century, by Maggie Mackenzie for York Branch OGS.
https://york.ogs.on.ca/meetings-events/

Thursday 14 Apr. 6:30: All That Other “Stuff:” Other Census Records
Beyond the Federal Population Schedules, by Curt Witcher for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center. https://acpl.libnet.info/event/6430651

Thursday 14 Apr. 7 pm: British Columbia Genealogical Society, by Eunice Robinson for Lambton Branch OGS. https://lambton.ogs.on.ca/calendar/lambton-county-branch-researching-in-british-columbia/

Friday 15 Apr. 2 pm.  Expelled from Nova Scotia: Researching the Acadian Diaspora to the Colonies, by Ann G. Lawthers for Legacy Family Tree Webinars https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/expelled-from-nova-scotia-researching-the-diaspora-to-the-colonies/

Saturday 16 Apr. 10 am. Writing Family History: Turning research into Shareable Stories, by Lynn Palermo for Kingston Branch OGS. https://kingston.ogs.on.ca/

Saturday 16 Apr. 1 pm.  Living in Interesting Times: Two Loyalist Families in York, by Rick Hill for Quinte Branch OGS. https://quinte.ogs.on.ca/2022/03/31/living-in-interesting-times/

The Library and Archives Canada Departmental Plan, the official basis on which Parliament votes funds for the fiscal year starting 1 April, is now online at https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/about-us/report-plans-priorities/departmental-plan-2022-2023/Pages/Departmental-plan-2022-2023.aspx 

Just as last year, the 2022–23 Departmental Plan is built around two strategic priorities: optimizing its digital capacity and transforming its services.

As researchers, we are most interested in LAC’s role in providing access to documentary heritage. The following is extracted from a table showing the planned results, the result indicators, the targets and the target dates for 2022–23, and the actual results for the three most recent fiscal years for which actual results are available.

The amount of new digitized holdings is planned to be returned to the 2019-20 level of 3.5 million after the pandemic decline of 2020-21. However,  3.5 million is a substantial decline from 4.8 million in 2018-19 and 10.2 million in 2017-18.

The plan also calls for a decline in unique visitors to LAC’s website, from 2.7 million in 2020-21 to 2 million. Planned service transactions also show a decline from pre-pandemic levels.

Experienced researchers already familiar with LAC collections may be uneasy when reading this paragraph on risk.

Following the construction of Ādisōke, LAC must fundamentally rethink its service offerings. When Ādisōke opens in 2026, it is anticipated that the vast majority of visitors will be unfamiliar with LAC’s collection and services. This will be an opportunity for LAC to connect with new audiences, provided that the institution plans for this shift now.

There’s a promise of “a new strategy to … fundamentally transform its services by focusing on users’ needs and the user experience, and by continuously improving them.” It’s essential that the strategy incorporates the needs of the academic and independent researcher communities, including genealogists.

Last year I looked at the number of mentions of some keywords giving insight into importance and trends. Here they are in this year’s plan with last year’s in parathesis: Digit* 66 (55), Continu* 33 (36), Indigenous 42 (10), * Innov 6 (5), Geneal* 2 (1), Ādisōke 23 (0), newspaper 1 (0), director* 0 (0), census 0 (0).

Remember Library and Archives Canada at 395 Wellington? Perhaps access restrictions have kept you away for months, or even a couple of years.

Now most of the research facilities are available for researchers Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. You are still required to make a reservation two weeks in advance with bookings opening each Monday at 10 am ET for an additional week of reservations.

You can now book up to eight reservations maximum per week, a great boon for those coming to Ottawa from away.

Check out the procedures and COVID protocol at Book your visit in Ottawa: Step 1. Overview.

The April/May issue of Internet Genealogy is now in the mail and at newsstands. It’s packed with interesting articles.

As usual, I turned first to the back page to read Dave Obee’s thought-provoking column. He bemoans the questions he did not ask relatives now gone, then muses “I still have time to tell the stories of my own generation – of my sisters and my cousins, and while I am thinking of it, of myself
as well.”  Will he? If you’re thinking of how best to spend your time for the edification of future generations, is it in researching your ancestors or documenting your own life story?

You’ve probably experienced already how the information you gleaned from hours of work with old documents, or microfilmed copies, now appears with a quick search online.  Is that trend going to continue? Yes. What won’t be retrievable is the stories stored in your memory. As a writer, Dave doesn’t appear to have the writer’s block excuse most of the rest of us do.  Or perhaps we could fess up that when we explore family history it’s not for future generations, along with the excitement of citing your sources (in ESM approved fashion) but as a pleasant challenge for ourselves.

What’s on the other 53 pages?

Sue Lisk always has well written creative articles. This issue she tells us about a lesser-known Ontario resource, the Tweedsmuir Community History Books, and finding insight into earlier generations through scrapbooks and their poetry.

The first article in the issue is English and Irish Nonconformist Records, by Michelle Dennis. Read it for the history and research resources available for those who did not follow the Established Church.

Genealogy technology enthusiast Liza Alzo also has two articles. In Genealogy NFTs she discusses transitioning from family heirlooms to NFTs. Like cryptocurrencies, NFTs remain rather beyond my grade level. In The Future of Genealogy Conferences she points out that the traditional conference 50 minute presentation plus ten for questions is too much of a meal, especially for younger people growing up with YouTube, Twitter and TikTok. Then she speculates on the role of AI. Food for thought, especially for those of us stuck in the rut.

There’s much more: articles by Robbie Goor, Diane L. Richard, Christine Woodcock, David Norris, Karen L. Newman, and the first article in a promised regular column by Rick Voight about telling your family stories.