Anglo-Celtic Connections

You can now access service files for the Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers regiment transferred to the UK National Archives from the Ministery of Defence. They are individually catalogued online in WO 420.

For other ranks, the catalogue entry includes name, usually initials and surname, service number and date of birth. If the person was born more than 115 years ago the file may be viewed at Kew. Those for a date of birth more recent than 1906 (at present) will be made available over time year-by-year.

Information in the full file typically consists of personal information and interactions between the individual and the part of the armed forces they served with such as record of service, disciplinary and conduct sheets, service postings and information captured when they first signed up.

Find out more here.

UK Quaker Deaths entries in this collection document in more or less detail the lives of many Quaker members. Most have standard biographical information – name, age, death date, position within the Society. More notable people may rate obituaries, even two or three pages.

Covering the period 1810 – 1918, the 27,580 entries are taken from the Annual Monitor. Some entries are from outside the UK, 52 for Canada.

Dorset Memorial Inscriptions has more than 56,000 index entries added taken from gravestones, tombs, monuments and even stained glass windows. The collection now totals 140,864 with entries from the mid 17th century to 2007. There are many entries with no date information.

Home Children Canada became registered with the Canada Revenue Agency as a charity effective 17 March 2022.

Formerly known as British Home Children Advocacy & Research Association the CRA registration is for its educational endeavour.

The organization’s mission, from its website, is “to bring the true stories of the British Home Children to light, maintain their memory, and to reunite the families separated by the child migrant schemes.

While the advocacy role is no longer highlighted, advocacy remains in the background. Notice “true stories” as if false ones were prevalent! There’s mention of “reconnecting families unjustly torn apart by these migrant programs” ignoring the positive outcomes. While there was abuse many children benefitted by being removed from destitution and squalor in the UK.

This is a release from the NLS.

We are also pleased to add online over 200 maps of Great Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries. These maps present an excellent overview of England, Scotland and Wales, and sometimes including Ireland, showing specific subjects such as roads, railways, air travel, population, power generation, rainfall and housing, as well as things like changing administrative divisions. Some of these expand our coverage of the Ordnance Survey’s Ten-mile to the Inch (1:625,000) Planning maps series, initiated in the 1940s, and intended to form a survey of national life and resources. Others include military maps showing barracks and military districts, as well as maps to illustrate specific historical time periods, such as Ancient Britain, Britain in the Dark Ages, Roman Britain, and Monastic Britain.

We have divided these maps into the Ordnance Survey “ten mile” Planning maps, other Ordnance Survey small-scale maps, and maps by other publishers:

• Ordnance Survey, “Ten Mile” Planning Maps of the United Kingdom, 1940s-1970s – 183 sheets
• Ordnance Survey, small-scale maps of Great Britain, 19th to 20th centuries – 35 sheets
• General maps of Great Britain and Ireland, 16th to 20th centuries – 41 maps

Perhaps your attention is immediately grabbed by MAPS on this magazine cover.
When I opened the cover and read in Editor Sarah Williams column that there was an article on weather and our ancestors all other priorities for a couple of hours went out the window.

The article, by Norfolk genealogist, writer and educator, Gill Blanchard is a comprehensive look at a myriad of types. There’s a panel with six essential maps for family historians, another on using the National Library of Scotland online map collection, and yet another on 10 useful map websites. Included is Faden’s Map of Norfolk, new to me, London Picture Archive, and Map History.

Ruth Symes article “Hurricanes and Heatwaves” is an overview of “how you can find out how the weather affected your ancestor’s lives.” Much of the article deals with efforts to digitize weather information from various historical sources. Missing is an explanation of how to get weather information for an event in your family history in the past 150 years or so from official records at the British Meteorological Office. A panel on how to do that, much as in the maps article for the National Library of Scotland maps collection, would have made the article more valuable.

There are lots more: street photos, First World War pension cards, Lost Cousins, postal workers, Rosemary Collins has an article on the pubs of coastal Lincolnshire refering to a project website www.letstalk.lincolnshire.gov.uk/inns-on-the-edge

As always, the issue is available through the PressReader subscription of many Canadian public libraries.

Find 55,894 entries in this Montreal collection for the years 1767 to 1899 now available through MyHeritage. The index transcriptions give the name of the deceased, the burial year, the name of the church, and the religious denomination.

You’ll likely find images of the original record via FamilySearch and the Montreal section of Canada, Quebec Non-Catholic Parish Registers – FamilySearch Historical Records. The records are also available on Ancestry.

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

Tuesday 05 Apr. 2:30 pm: Exploring Patterns in Your Family History Research, by Melissa Tennant for The Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library. https://acpl.libnet.info/event/6421742

Tuesday 05 Apr. 7:30 pm: Canadian Resource Review by Sher Leetooze for Durham Branch OGS. https://ogs.on.ca/events/online-free-resources-review-durham-branchs-april-meeting/

Tuesday 05 Apr. 10 pm: My Top 20 Free Australian Genealogy Websites, by Shauna Hicks for Legacy Family Tree Webinars. https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/my-top-20-free-australian-genealogy-websites/

Wednesday 06 Apr. 2 pm: The Beginner’s Guide To DNA Testing For Genealogy, by Michelle Leonard for Legacy Family Tree Webinars. https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/the-beginners-guide-to-dna-testing-for-genealogy/

Wednesday 6 Apr. 2:30 pm: The Decade of Centenaries: Researching Ireland 1912-1923, by Chris Paton for the Guild of One-Name Studies. https://one-name.org/ireland1912-1923/

Wednesday 06 Apr. Making Use of All Your Census, by Ken McKinlay for Huron Branch OGS. https://huron.ogs.on.ca/events/huron-branch-making-use-of-all-your-census-ken-mckinley/

Thursday 07 Apr. 8:30 pm: DNA Chat with Sara: Ethnicity Results, with Sara Allen for The Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library. https://acpl.libnet.info/event/6430342

Thursday 07 Apr. 5 pm: Start of Legacy Family Tree 24 hour marathon. See the program and register at https://familytreewebinars.com/24

Thursday 7 Apr. 7 pm: Think Like an Archivist: Finding Genealogy Records in Libraries and Archives Worldwide, by Nancy Loe for OGS. https://ogs.on.ca/zoom-meetings/nancy-loe-think-like-an-archivist-finding-genealogy-records-in-libraries-and-archives-worldwide/

Friday 08 Apr. 7 pm: Tweedsmuir Women’s Institute, by Irene Robillard for Kent Branch OGS. https://kent.ogs.on.ca/events/kent-branch-tweedsmuir-womens-institute/

Saturday 09 Apr. 9 am: Introducing the 1921 Census of England & Wales , by Mary McKee for BIFHSGO.  https://www.bifhsgo.ca/events

Saturday 09 Apr. 10 am:  “Betty Jeans Story” Adoption, Forensic and Genetic DNA. by Mags Gaulden for BIFHSGO. ttps://www.bifhsgo.ca/events

Mostly derived from newspaper listings are the following updates.

Canada, Obituary Collection, 1898-Current now has 10,878,408 items, that’s up from 9,387,518 last June

U.S., Obituary Collection, 1930-Current has 198,633,254 items, updated from 191,120,426 last June.

UK and Ireland, Obituary Index, 2004-2019 now with 6,700,836 records, up from 6,470,815 last June.

Australia and New Zealand, Obituary Index, 2004-Current 2,093,598 records, up from 1,982,265  last June.

Caribbean, Obituary Index, 2003-2019 with 97,330 records.

Also updated, based on scouring web postings, is:

U.S., Cemetery and Funeral Home Collection, 1847-Current with 101,800,384 records.

According to this article from The Conversation the final 8% of our genome has now been sequenced thanks to long-read technology. Are there hidden properties in this formerly elusive part of our DNA that will be useful for genetic genealogy?

I was surprised to find a reference to this mural monument in a book I recently reviewed.  The image is from the Illustrated London News of 17 November 1855;  the monument in the Cathedral Church of St Paul in London, Ontario. It pays tribute to Lt. Col. Chester and the men of the 23rd Royal Welch Fusiliers who fell at the Battle of Alma during the Crimean War (October 1853 – February 1856).

I was intrigued. The Crimea is 8,000 Km from London, ON. What’s the connection? Who was Lt. Col. Chester?

Henry George Chester purchased a commission as a 2nd Lt in 1830. He is mentioned on numerous index cards of the British Military and Naval Records (RG 8, C Series) at Library and Archives Canada, including that he succeeded to command of the 23rd Royal Welch Fusiliers at London, Canada West, on 19 May 1850 when a Maj. and became a Lt. Col. before returning to the UK in 1853.

According to The Times of 17 October 1854, he was the youngest child of Maj. Gen. Harry Chester of the Coldstream Guards and his wife Harriet (nee Clinton), and brother of Sir Robert Chester, Master of the Ceremonies.

He died in battle leading his regiment, which was part of the Light Division, on 20 September 1854.

It’s not evident why he would warrant such a memorial in London.  Were there recruits while he was in London who also participated in the Battle of Alma?

Officers of the 23rd Regiment killed and wounded were: Lieutenant Col. H. G. Chester, killed; Captain A. W. W. Wynn, killed; Captain F. E Evans, killed; Capt. J. C. Conolly, killed; Lieutenant F. P. Radcliff, killed; Lieutenant Sir W. Young, killed; Second Lieutenant H. Anstruther, killed; Second Lieutenant J. H. Butler, killed; Captain W. P. Campbell, severely wounded; Lieutenant H. Bathurst, wounded severely; Captain E. C. Hopton, wounded slightly; Lieutenant F. Sayer, wounded slightly; Lieutenant Acting Adjutant A. Applewhaite, wounded severely. The killed and wounded of this regiment numbered over 400 men.

There’s what appears to be a partial list here starting at image 92. The losses were reportedly the most of any regiment involved and more than the casualties in Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade in which Toronto-born Lieutenant Alexander Roberts Dunn, saw action — the first Canadian to be awarded the Victoria Cross.

Sharing a shortish opinion piece by Dan Gardner on his PastPresentFuture blog worth reading.

we should err on the side of keeping what exists and expressing ourselves through the creation of new memorials, if not to grant past generations the respect we hope future generations will accord us, then to allow memorials to accumulate over time, like the slow accumulations of silt that build a river delta — my favourite metaphor — and leave a record of the many generations that, collectively, made the place what it is.

You might also enjoy his post Statues Have Their Own Histories.