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

Tuesday 5 Oct. 7:30 pm: Researching Women on Ancestry, by Lesley Anderson for Durham Region Branch OGS.
https://durham.ogs.on.ca/

Tuesday 5 Oct. 9 pm: A Cargo of Criminals: Transportation to Australia, by Carol Baxter for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/a-cargo-of-criminals-transportation-to-australia/

Wednesday 6 Oct, 1 pm: Blacks Britannica: Diversity in Medieval and Early Modern England, by Onyeka Nubia for Gresham College. https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/blacks-britannica

Wednesday 6 Oct, 2 pm: DNA Health Tests and Your Family Health History, by Rick Crume for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/dna-health-tests-and-your-family-health-history/

Wednesday 6 Oct. 2:30 pm: Wednesdays with Witcher Series:
Family Interviews, by Curt Witcher for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/5589792

Wednesday 6 Oct. 7:30pm: Female Preachers of the Bible Christian Church: the impact of the church on immigration to Huron and those that served, by Jim Bowen for Huron County Branch OGS.
https://huron.ogs.on.ca/events/oct-webinar-female-preachers-of-the-bible-christian-church-jim-bowen/

Thursday 7 Oct. 7:30 am: Going To My Father’s House: a history of my times, by Patrick Joyce and Madeleine Bunting for the London School of Economics.
https://www.lse.ac.uk/International-Inequalities/Events/Going-to-my-fathers-house/Going-to-My-Fathers-House-a-history-of-my-times

Thursday 7 Oct. 6:30 pm: Interpreting DNA Results, by Sara Allen for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/5588287

Thursday 7 Oct. 7 pm: How to Find a Will in Court Records, by Lindsey Winstone for OGS (Ontario Ancestors). 
https://ogs.on.ca/zoom-meetings/october-webinar-lyndsey-winstone/

Friday 8 Oct. 9 am: Harry and Ethel:Two unlikely spies, by Mark Dunton for the UK National Archives. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/harry-and-ethel-unlikely-spies-tickets-169089744979?aff=em

Friday 8 Oct. from 11 am: Six presentations in the 2021 Reisinger Lecture Series, available on Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://bcgcertification.org/webinars-reisinger-2021/

Friday 8 Oct. 7 pm: The Woman in the Photo – Discovering My Indigenous Heritage, by Rachel Cyr for Kent County Branch OGS.
https://kent.ogs.on.ca/events/captain-keating/

Saturday 9 Oct. 9:30 am: Picture This, by Stephen Gill for BIFHSGO
https://www.bifhsgo.ca/events

Saturday 9 Oct. 11 am: Making the Most of GENUKI, with Sue McNelly from ISBGFH.
https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_zUdrGR5wTayR9gAVdQXy8g

 

Maps showing the location of all CWGC cemeteries, worldwide, are not on the CWGC website. They may be found via
http://ww1centenary.oucs.ox.ac.uk/space-into-place/commonwealth-cemeteries-of-world-war-one/.

This will be helpful if you know where the deceased’s battalion was fighting but the body was not recovered and identified. Chances are burial would be in a nearby cemetery, if the body was recovered.

Sometimes a body was recovered with the regiment known but otherwise unidentified. For each cemetery in France and Belgium, the number of unidentified burials is given in closing paragraphs of the ‘History Section.’ The website has no details on the unidentified casualties as the website search facility operates on a name search.

Thanks to the CWGC for this information.

The November issue is already out. Here are the contents.

In defence of George III
Andrew Roberts counters the narrative that the King was a tyrannical brute who gave the American colonies no choice but to rebel. (Did you know the complaint of the American colonist’s, who were largely self-governing, was over taxes of 7 pence per person to pay for their own defence?)

Medieval duels
Jules Skoda reveals why our ancestors chose to fight to the death to resolve intractable disputes.

Windows onto history
From arrow slits to stained glass masterpieces, Rachel Hurdley shows how windows illuminate the past.

The author of abolition
David Olusoga on how Olaudah Equiano added a powerful voice to the campaign to end the slave trade.

Elizabeth and Mary
Susan Doran chronicles Elizabeth 1 and Mary Queen of Scots fraught relationship via 12 objects

The firing line
James Holland tells the epic story of the tank regiment that won more battle honours than any other British army unit in the Second World War.

Medieval worship
Nicholas Orme answers five big questions on the experience of going to church in the Middle Ages.

There’s additional content at https://www.historyextra.com/

Once again this year the Ontario Genealogical Society is offering half price on membership renewal if you pair with someone who becomes a new member. They get the half-off deal too.

As a result of this, and other recruitment initiatives OGS increased its membership by 2% in 2021, that’s according to information from Society President  Heather McTavish Taylor at a webinar last week.

Heather mention the offer as starting on 1 November. As of writing, I don’t see the offer slashed across the OGS webpage nor information on the procedure to follow.  When I do I’ll post that information along with an offer to pair with a new member and attempt to match existing members with potential new ones. Stay tuned.

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

Explore ancestral places with YouTube
What can you find out if you search YouTube for a place of ancestral interest, perhaps adding a county?

YouTube: Understanding Probability and Genetic Genealogy

Time Team Digital

Archives of Ontario to recommence public services
As posted by OGS but not on AO website. Long overdue

Climate Change in the Arctic

How much would Bach make on Spotify?

Thanks to this week’s contributors. Anonymous, Brenda Turner, Gail, gail benjafield, Glenn W, Judy Humphries, KAYTHEGARDENER, Lynne Willoughby, M. Anne, Myrtle Johnston, Nancy Frey, Nick McDonald, rob bennie, Robert Halfyard, Susan Courage, Susan Oleskiw, Unknown.

You can’t miss “Find Your London Family” on the cover of the issue.

Jonathan Scott, a regular contributor, explores the most important website for probing the lives of Londoners. From A and AIM25 to W and West End at War, Scott finds 47 sites with London interest. They included the major commercial sites, archives, family history societies, and much more. If you want to find pictures to illustration your family history try https://www.londonpicturearchive.org.uk/.

In the second featured article, Old Postcards, Heather Baggot reveals how she “follows the clues in postcards to uncover fascinating family stories.”

In Pillow Talk, Jas Adams gets into sex in the 1940s. A study in 1949 with over 2,000 people interviewed, supplemented by over 1,000 people in the Mass Observation study, found the 31% believed life could be happy without sex while 37% said it was impossible to be happy without sex.

If that’s not enough to get you to check out the issue, available through your public library, there’s other content on Oxfordshire, brickmakers, canal workers, nonconformists, Zotero, the 1911 census and more. A good way to spend a rainy day.

 

If your heritage lies in Essex new records for Chingford, Leytonstone, South Chingford and Walthamstow in Findmypast’s Essex Marriages and Banns 1537-1935 collection are likely to be of interest. Those parishes are now in the London Borough of Waltham Forest.

The number of records is dwarfed by those of the other FMP addition this week, over 5.7 million records:

California marriages, 1850-1945
Indiana marriages, 1811-2007
Iowa marriages, 1809-1992
Massachusetts marriages, 1841-1915

Many have linked images of the original; the indexing is from FamilySearch.

As of 30 September for Canada, there are 31,113,161 entries in the newspapers.com Obituary Index, 1800s-current. That’s up from 31,056,223 in April. The database is particularly valuable for more recent years when official death records are not available.

For the US, there are now 843,651,119 entries in the equivalent index, up from 834,426,322 entries in April.

Looking for a deceased relative in East London? Chadwell Heath Cemetery (now known as Mark’s Gate) from 1934 comprising 16,681 records,  and Eastbrookend Cemetery from 1914 containing 23,066 records, are now available to view on www.deceasedonline.com. 

The records comprise digital scans of the original burial registers up to 2006, computerized records from 2006 to 2019, and grave details for each of the graves and their occupants

Coming next to complete the Barking and Dagenham collection will be Rippleside Cemetery with 62,622 records from 1886 to 2019.

 

Gloucestershire, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1813 now has 4,858,358 records. In January 2019 the collection had 4,855,897 records, so the update is an increase of 2,461 records. No indication if the additions are for a particular parish or parishes.

The British Newspaper Archive now has a total of 45,139,078 pages online (44,623,834 last month).

TITLE	DATE RANGE
Faversham News	1900, 1904, 1936-1949, 1951-1980
Daily News (London)	1922-1938, 1940-1949, 1951-1954, 1957-1960
Cornish Post and Mining News	1889-1895, 1898-1899, 1919-1944
Bury Free Press	1988, 1993-1994
Newark Advertiser	1910, 1912, 1987-1990
Croydon Times	1861-1870, 1875-1878, 1880-1884, 1891-1899, 1901-1909, 1912-1918, 1920-1950, 1952-1961
Australian and New Zealand Gazette	1850-1882
Lynn News & County Press	1871-1873, 1875-1889, 1891-1892, 1913, 1915, 1918, 1924, 1938-1939, 1942

FamilySearch continues to cater to researchers with presentations each Tuesday and Thirsday advertized as at the beginner level. Find information on those sessions at https://media.familysearch.org/free-family-history-classes-and-webinars-for-october-2021/.

They are far from the only game in town. Many Societies have volunteers who are pleased to initiate people into genealogy’s magic arts.  Some societies and  commercial genealogical organizations. have a library of past presentations. 

And there are other resources at the beginner and intermediate level at https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Family_History_Library_Classes_and_Webinars

Don’t overlook your local public library, many of which have genealogy expertise on staff.

For more material, much more in-depth, try the over 1,000 free, on-demand sessions from RootsTech Connect 2021 at https://www.familysearch.org/rootstech/rtc2021/.