Anglo-Celtic Connections

Miscellaneous items I found interesting this week.

Legacy Family Tree Webinars
Today is the final day of the annual sale on new memberships. 50% off. Although you can attend and view most presentations live, only members have access to a special AI series. Steve Little will be giving an end-of-year review, “The Best Uses of AI for Genealogists,” on Friday, 19 December at 2 pm.

Frank Gehry, the architect of the unconventional, the accidental, and the inspiring, has died at 96

Ancestry Updated England and Wales, Death Index, 1989-2025
Updated on 4 December.  The index now has 7,898,156 entries, compiled from funeral directors’ records and obituaries.

The Jackson Building

New York State Death Index
10.5 million records are searchable, indexing basic genealogical data from New York State between 1880 and 2017. Includes a basic natural language search system. It’s thanks to Reclaim the Records.

On This Date
In 1703, the Great Storm, hit south Wales and England. Hundreds of people and thousands of livestock were drowned in the Somerset Levels. In London, about 2,000 chimney stacks were blown down. At least 1,500 men were lost at sea.

Thanks to the following individuals for their comments and tips: Anonymous, Barbara May Di Mambro, Craig Milne, Gail, Glenn Wright, Patte Wood, Teresa, and Unknown.

Digitized issues of the London Evening Advertiser and the London Morning Advertiser are now available for free public access. Find them through https://www.crkn-rcdr.ca/en/whats-new-canadiana-collections

The London Evening Advertiser has coverage for 2,927 issues between 1922 and 1932.

The London Morning Advertiser has a scattering of 87 issues between 1923 and 1932.

Canadiana has full-text search enabled for these collections, allowing querying names, businesses, and events. However, search hits are not highlighted on the page. While this might seem like a hurdle, it opens an opportunity for serendipity, or, put another way, the hazard of stumbling into rabbit holes. How else would I know that a US community once tried to ban jazz!

Further editions of these papers for the second half of 1932 are listed as “coming soon.”

Dorset Poll Cards
This Dorset collection from the mid-1800s, 671 poll cards, is FMP’s headline addition this week. Sourced from the Dorset FHS, these are partial transcripts, with more on the images of the original. You won’t find a Mary, Joan or Ann.

Kent Parish Registers:  Over 21,666 baptism records and 996 marriage records added to this extensive Kent collection. The totals are now over 3.6 million baptism records and over 3.2 million marriage and banns records.

National Burial Index (England & Wales)
An additional 13,181 records from 1580 to 1851, bringing the total to over 17 million.

Fermanagh Cemetery Records
For Irish researchers, 1,170 new records have been added for a total of 20,768 records with transcriptions and headstone images.

The Newspaper Archive
The newspaper holdings have grown by 200,872 pages this week, with three completely new titles and updates to 27 existing publications.

New Titles:
• Anglo-Celt (1846–1849, 1858, 1864–1870)
• Glasgow Argus (1844–1846)
• Hawick Advertiser and Roxburghshire Gazette (1889–1891)

Updates
• Monmouthshire Merlin
• Montgomeryshire Express
• Pick-me-up
• Pontefract & Castleford Express
• Yorkshire Evening Press
• Aberdeen Free Press
• Arbroath Guide
• Banffshire Herald
• Border Standard
• Buteman
• Falkirk Express
• Glasgow Free Press
• Glasgow Gazette
• Greenock Advertiser
• Hamilton Herald and Lanarkshire Weekly News
• Northern Warder
• Orcadian
• Peterhead Sentinel and General Advertiser for Buchan District
• Portobello Advertiser
• Stirling Journal and Advertiser
• Stonehaven Journal
• The Glasgow Sentinel
• The Reporter (Stirling)
• Irish Ecclesiastical Gazette

This new collection contains 351,715 records for students who attended University College London between 1828 and 1954. The records contain a combination of typed and handwritten information. Some records include a photograph of the student.

You won’t find 351,715 unique students. Five hits for last name Northwood were for two individuals. The form for initial entry provides most information. Subsequent records may be surprising.

There’s also a browse capability for various record types. Not mentioned is a compilation of those who died in WW2.

I like that The Genealogist isn’t satisfied with partial indexing.

The most recent instance is the new fully searchable National Probate Calendar (1858–1879). It has 849,412 probate records, which is what you find indexed elsewhere, AND there are 2,021,928 total individuals indexed. TheGenealogist makes them all fully searchable.

I tested it with the calendar entry for George Reid.

4 April. The Will with two Codicils of George Reid
formerly of Arundel House Ladbroke-grove Notting Hill but
late of 65 Earl’s-Court-road Kensington both in the County of
Middlesex Staff Commander in the Royal Navy who died
14 December 1877 at 65 Earl’s-Court-road was proved at the
Principal Registry by Jane Reid of 185 Queen’s-road
Peckbam in the County of Surrey Widow the Relict and
William Ferguson of 46 George-street in the City of Edinburgh
in North Britain Writer to the Signet the Executors.

Findmypast and Ancestry find the entry if the search is for George in 1878, but not in a search for Jane or William Ferguson.

There are a few glitches still to be worked out, and the date range is expected to be extended in the new year.

Steve Little, AI genealogy expert, posted on his AI Genealogy Insights blog the following information about a free online session on Wednesday, 10 December. Worthwhile for those open to exploring how AI can help the genealogist, and how it can’t.

Since 1 November, the map experts at the National Library of Scotland have updated their website with four significant map collections that will help visualize the places our ancestors lived.

Most recently released were 354 early printed maps of Great Britain and Ireland, ranging from the 1570s to the 1960s, including town plans that show how local infrastructure developed over centuries.

They also digitized over 6,600 sheets from the Second Land Utilisation Survey. These maps from roughly 1958 to 1974 show specific land usage like industrial zones or arable farmland. You can now overlay these onto modern satellite imagery to see changes.

For researchers focusing on England and Wales, there are 1,329 new “earlier states” of the Ordnance Survey Six-inch first edition. These sheets, covering the 1840s to 1880s, are valuable because they can reveal details like railway lines or boundaries that were altered in later printings.

Finally, the library added 1,860 Survey of India maps (1912-1951). These provide detailed coverage of India, Bangladesh, Burma, and Pakistan.

Find a link, and more about NLS developments in their December Newsletter.

FamilySearch Full Text Search added approximately 21 million Italian records on 1 and 2 December. That’s over 90% of the additions so far this month. It includes about 4.5 million births/baptisms, 11.5 million marriages, and 3.5 million deaths/burials.

These cover the entire peninsula, but there is a heavy emphasis on:

• The South (Mezzogiorno): Sicily (Catania, Messina, Palermo, Agrigento), Calabria, Campania (Naples/Caserta), Puglia, and Basilicata.
• The North: Lombardy, Piedmont, Veneto, Liguria, and Emilia-Romagna.
• Central: Tuscany, Umbria, Lazio, and Marche.

Several collections are indexed under pre-unification state names, before 1861:

• Kingdom of Sardinia (covering Piedmont/Sardinia).
• Two Sicilies (covering Southern Italy and Sicily).

There are several Italian collections (Emilia-Romagna, Veneto) with massive record counts explicitly listed for 1955 or for close ranges (1951-1952). It may be that they recently cleared a 70-year privacy embargo.

With his appointment as Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, as well as Minister responsible for Official Languages, Library and Archives Canada now reports to Marc Miller.

Like most of his predecessors, he represents a Quebec riding; his is Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Sœurs, which he has represented since 2015. Multilingual, a lawyer by profession, he previously served as Minister of Indigenous Services from 2019 to 2021, Minister of Crown–Indigenous Relations from 2021 to 2023, and Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship from 2023 to 2025.

It’s just been released! I’ve not reviewed it yet. Here’s their overview.

“Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little examine Google’s groundbreaking Gemini 3 release, which delivers state-of-the-art multimodal reasoning and sets a new benchmark for AI capabilities. They also explore ChatGPT’s upgrade to version 5.1 with improved instruction following and better handling of longer conversation.

The hosts discuss Canva’s new Creative Operating System, which now generates AI-powered designs directly within the platform.

This week’s Tip of the Week demonstrates how Gemini 3 can use the context you provide it to greatly improve the accuracy of your hand written transcription.

In RapidFire, they cover NotebookLM’s new deep research mode, Nano Banana’s integration into Photoshop, Anthropic’s privacy policy changes regarding training data, and how Claude’s new usage monitoring feature can reduce your stress level.”

https://blubrry.com/3738800/150353256/ep37-google-gemini-3-released-chatgpt-51-upgrades-how-reasoning-improves-transcriptions-canva-ai-image-generation/

Miscellaneous items I found interesting this week.

Lakeshore Genealogical Society
I was saddened to read in the OGS eWeekly of the closure of the Lakeshore Genealogical Society as of September 1, 2025. Sustaining a small society is increasingly challenging. The society website will close at the end of 2025. Are there resources there that you need that will disappear?

A UK Year in Archives
TNA’s annual publication about and for the UK archives sector. It brings together stories and case studies from across the sector, showcasing and celebrating archives and their work.

Nate’s Deli, Ottawa’s Longest Sandwich Line

Colour-coded Weather Alerts
Canada has adopted the yellow – orange (amber) – red weather alert system widely used internationally.

“At this point, AI tools like Gemini should be able to make most digitized handwritten documents searchable and readable in transcription.”
Also see Mark Humphries post Gemini 3 Solves Handwriting Recognition and it’s a Bitter Lesson

Thanks to the following individuals for their comments and tips: Anonymous, Gail, Glenn Wright, Nick Mcdonald, Teresa, and Unknown.