Anglo-Celtic Connections

A year ago at RootsTech MyHeritage revealed animation of family photographs. Some thought it creepy, even scary.

This year they upped their game. With LiveStory there’s not only movement of facial features, it speaks synchronized with a text. Initially, it uses information drawn from a family tree you have on MyHeritage. I found that a rather dull recitation of facts, and it sometimes jumped to conclusions, say that the marriage was happy. However, you can edit the text and change the voice. What you can’t change is pronunciation. Ypres was mispronounced, just as did the BEF soldiers. Passchendaele was a particular challenge.

See the MyHeritage demo here.

I’ve been trying it and hope to have my own demo shortly.

 

 

 

Happy St Piran’s Day

A special BIFHSGO event is coming. A virtual presentation on 20 April 2022 at 7pm EDT with Dr. Joe Flood, administrator of the Cornwall DNA Projects. He will share his expertise on the haplogroups and genetic lines of this historic county in South West England.

Cornwall is regarded as one of the Celtic nations, homeland to the Cornish.
Dr Flood’s talk “DNA and Genealogy – The DNA of Cornwall” will cover a quick introduction to the use of DNA in genealogy, with a particular emphasis on Cornwall touching on:
Autosomal DNA and Cornwall – finding cousins, solving brick walls and confirming family trees, % Cornish;
Y DNA and Cornwall – surname reconstruction and project strategy; the Coad project
and book; using Y-DNA to solve brick walls; clusters; and,
Haplogroups and the Y-haplotree; the prehistory of the Cornish people through DNA (Beakers, Germanic, and Danish/Viking).

Dr Joe Flood is a policy analyst, mathematician and author, who lives in Australia. Through researching families in Cornwall, he established and is the administrator of the Cornwall DNA projects on the FamilyTreeDNA website. He is particularly interested in rare Cornish YDNA, and in the prehistory of humanity as revealed in the Y-haplotree. Dr Flood also runs a One Name Study on the Coad and Coode surnames.

Please plan to join us for this BIFHSGO Special Event. Registration is open here.

Here’s the full Table of Contents of the March 2022 issue from the Society of Genealogists.

Where Have All the Collections Gone? Preservation and Digital Transformation at the Society of Genealogists
Christine Worthington, Transformation Manager

Women at War
Emma Jolly

The Memorial Cards Collection
Christine Worthington & Else Churchill

Boys will be Boys
Michael Gandy, FSG

Volunteering for the Pedigree Roll Project
Jo McKinnon

Adventures with the Great Card Index
Graham Simons

Catholic Ancestors – A Select Bibliography
Michael Gandy, FSG

Unravelling the Double Life of William Stedhall / Peter Smith
Peter Manning, VP. FIGRS.

A Honeymoon in France, 1914
Peter Bolton

Curtis Miranda Lampson – from American Farmhand to British Baronet
James Day
Comment:  A particularly interesting article. A brief summary of his life is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Lampson

Initiatives for the Improvement of Parish Registers in the Diocese of Carlisle
John Wintrip

Triple Cross – One up on a Double Cross
Fred Feather

‘Oh I do Like to be Beside the Seaside’ The Jerusalem of the Past… and so many other stories
Helen Dawkins LRPS

Correspondence

Readers’ Queries

Obituaries

Deceased Member

Centre Pull-out Section

Society of Genealogists’ News

Library update

This week Findmypast headlines the 7,914  entries in the Quaker Women’s Petition, 1659. This anti-tithe petition delivered to Parliament was organized by the Society of Friends, or ‘Quakers’.  Not all signatories were followers of the faith, but all disagreed with the taxes imposed by the Church of England. The index, created from an early 1900s transcription, gives first and last name and location which is typically a county or group of counties.

A larger new collection, over 50,00 records, is Lincolnshire burial transcriptions for the parishes of Horncastle (1559-1684, 18,039 records), Louth (1754-1812, 4,939 records), Bourne ( 1562- 1562,  19,574 records) and Great Grimsby (1855-1943, 14,712 records).

They’re the 800 lb gorilla of the genealogy world. You can’t ignore them — and they got that way for a good reason.

Here’s the company press release.

LEHI, Utah–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Taking photos and attaching them to a family tree on Ancestry can help people preserve images and memories, help connect family members with information they would never have found otherwise, and build ​​deeper connections with loved ones. That’s why Ancestry^®, the global leader in family history, today announced its exclusive partnership with media preservation and archiving specialist company Photomyne.

By integrating Photomyne’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) based technology, Ancestry customers will get an even easier way for family historians to digitize old family photo albums, by scanning and uploading multiple photographs at once through the Ancestry mobile app.

“Almost everyone has a shoebox filled with old family photos and albums that sit on a top shelf in their closet. The problem with that is that no one sees or shares them and they are often forgotten,” said Heather Friedland, Chief Product Officer at Ancestry. “With the Photomyne technology integrated into the Ancestry mobile app, you can now easily and quickly scan full pages of multiple images from your photo albums at once and with a click, have them automatically digitized and saved to Ancestry. Uploading your photos to Ancestry ensures your family memories are preserved and your family’s stories will be cherished for generations.”

Unlike other scanning tools, Photomyne’s AI technology uses the phone’s processor and their proprietary algorithms to:

• Auto-detect image boundaries and auto-crop photos
• Scan multiple images from one page and split into individual images
• Enhance and restore the quality of images

“They say a picture is worth a thousand words and photos are more valuable now than ever with the rise of user generated content,” said Photomyne CEO Nir Tzemah. “We are excited to be able to give the Ancestry community an even easier way to upload, scan, enhance and share priceless family images and memories.”

Ancestry customers will now also be able to upload and share images of photo albums previously added to Ancestry and apply the same auto-cropping, rotation, and image enhancement.

Beginning today, anyone can get started by downloading the Ancestry app and creating a free account.

COMMENT: I’ve not been able to try these, possibly because the release for Android platforms is delayed, while IOS is active.

 

For RootsTech, MyHeritage announces a dedicated hub where visitors can learn about everything related to the 1950 census, prepare for its launch, and search the collection.

MyHeritage will start fully indexing the 1950 census records as soon as the images are released on 1 April. Once this project is complete, MyHeritage will be offering free access to the indexed 1950 census records.

MyHeritage 1950 census page: https://www.myheritage.com/census/us/1950census/
U.S. Census Hub: https://myheritage.com/census/us/
Blog post with more details about the release of the 1950 census: https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/01/1950-census-release-is-coming-up-soon/

Comment: With MyHeritage indexing this census, as well as the consortium of Ancestry and FamilySearch, we can look forward to a real test of present-day indexing capabilities — accuracy as well as timeliness.

Find your strays in West European in this new Ancestry collection,  786 million records for eight EU countries with dates ranging from 1995 to 2015. Data available is Name, Residence Date, Street Address, Residence Place, Postal Code. But NOT phone number!

Here are the details

Phone Book Index	Records
Belgium, 1995, 1996, 1999, 2000, and 2002 to 2015 (in French)	70,397,625
Denmark, 2001 and 2003 (in Danish)	9,797,801
France, 1997 to 2007 (in French)	272,943,625
Germany, 2001 and 2003 (in German)	71,860,529
Italy, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2007, 2010, and 2011 (in Italian)	112,689,401
Luxembourg, 1997, 2001, 2002 and 2003 (in French)	662,779
Netherlands, 1997, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2011. (in Dutch)	31,865,565
Spain, 1999, 2002, and 2004 to 2015 (in Spanish)	216,179,948

As posted on the LAC website on 2 March 2022.

Statement by the Librarian and Archivist of Canada on the situation in Ukraine

As Librarian and Archivist of Canada, I would like to express my support for and solidarity with Ukraine and its people, and in particular that country’s library and archival professionals.

Library and Archives Canada is both horrified by the human tragedy that is unfolding as a result of Russia’s egregious attack on Ukraine, and deeply concerned at the serious threat that the ongoing hostilities present to the country’s rich literary and cultural heritage.

Tragically, we have already seen one of Ukraine’s most important art museums destroyed. As the fighting continues to rage on and escalate, other important institutions that are vital to telling inspiring Ukrainian stories to the world are or will soon be in grave danger.

It is often said that the first casualty of war is truth. Whether for today or tomorrow, a nation’s public record held by institutions like libraries and archives is an essential pillar of democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

This is not the first time that an armed conflict has threatened not only human lives but also humanity’s precious and diverse cultural heritage that we all share.

As we hope for peace to return to Ukraine soon, we should remember that wars rob us of our fundamental humanity in more ways than we can ever imagine.

Our message to all of those suffering as a result of this military aggression is clear: you are not alone; we stand with you.

Leslie Weir

I’ve attended a couple of presentations on the recently released census of England and Wales, and some other small jurisdictions. They were mostly clear so I almost didn’t go to Paul Milner’s Tuesday evening presentation for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.

I did, and I’m really glad. So did a slew of people who posted positive comments. Paul gave a clear explanation of the census basics and then went on to a fascinating case study of his own Milner ancestry. He worked the investigation resolving transcription errors and complementary sources breaking down a long-standing brickwall.

I strongly recommend taking 75 minutes out of your day to view it, free for a week for all at https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar-library/, Afterwards, it will be in the subscriber library.

In association with RootsTech, until Sunday, new subscriptions can be purchased at half-price using the coupon code rootstech22.

The war on the web is heating up. Although I doubt this blog would be a target it could get caught in a larger battle. And there’s always the potential for more mundane technical issues.

If you subscribe and don’t get the daily email with a notice about recent posts please try going directly to the site at www.anglocelticconnections.ca.

An extra shoutout for Mags Gaulden and Glenn Wright who are at the virtual podium today, 2 March 2022.

At 2 pm Mags will speak on a topic close to her heart,  Using WikiTree’s DNA Features in Your Family History Research.

WikiTree is one of the Global family Trees available online that works collaboratively to have an accurate, single family tree. You may have heard of WikiTree, but did you also know that WikiTree does DNA as well? WikiTree has very robust DNA features which can identify testers who may match you in the DNA connections section of an ancestor’s profile. We will work the features and show you how to further your family history research using WikiTree and its DNA features.

It’s on Legacy Family Tree Webinars so a major audience is expected.  Register at https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/using-wikitrees-dna-features-in-your-family-history-research/

At 7:30 pm my good friend, Glenn Wright will present Early Military History in Canada and Huron Involvement for Huron Branch OGS.

A past president of BIFHSGO and member of its Hall of Fame, Glenn was an archivist and historian for the National Archives of Canada, the Department of National Defence and the RCMP.

Register in advance at https://huron.ogs.on.ca/events/huron-branch-early-military-history-in-canada-and-huron-involvement-glenn-wright/

Updates, bolded below, are available with the passage of another year at https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/

Available are: Birth register records – 1864 to 1921; Marriage register records – 1845 to 1946 & Death register records – 1871* to 1971.

If you’re lucky you’ll get through to an image of the original record. Not so lucky! Then expect an index or a full transcription. Whichever, they’re free