A recording of this year’s lecture, held on the evening of 6 August, has been posted with the permission of the speaker, Kristen den Hartog. It is now free for everyone to view until 14 August.
https://torontofamilyhistory.org/learn/toronto-history-lecture/
New to MyHeritage as of 6 August, find 7,326,033 entries in this probate index for recent years. The information delivered is the name of the individual, the date of death, and the date and place of probate or administration.
The birth year in the query form does not appear to be linked.
The advantage of using MyHeritage rather than the government one at https://probatesearch.service.gov.uk/ is that it searches more than one death year at a time and is integrated with other searches.
This MyHeritage collection, 566,547 transcription records from the United Kingdom’s Police Gazette, documents soldiers who deserted from the army between 1828 and 1918. The records cover the years 1828-1845, 1858, 1880, 1885, 1898, and 1916-1918. Each entry typically includes the deserter’s name, age, occupation, residence, and service details such as regiment, date and place of desertion, and enlistment.
Additional information and similar records can be found on other sites. Ancestry offers “UK, Military Deserters, 1812-1927,” while Findmypast includes collections of deserters from the 1830s and the First World War. Other sources, with additional coverage, include The British Newspaper Archive, TheGenealogist, and Forces War Records.
It’s official. Forget LMA, or as the new website says, “Hello from The London Archives .. and a fond farewell to the metropolitan.”
Otherwise, you’d hardly know of the connection except for the address: 40 Northampton Rd, London, EC1R 0HB.
Find the new, clean-looking website at https://www.thelondonarchives.org/.
So far, the natural three-letter acronym TLA is not used on the website, except in the email address ask@tla.libanswers.com/.
Have you been waiting for the third shoe to drop?
MyHeritage recently added baptism and burial transcription records for the Archdeaconry of Rochester. Now, they include 860,931 banns and marriage transcriptions from 1559 to 1939.
As usual, these records include the names of the groom and bride, their ages at the time of the wedding, the date and place of the marriage or banns, and the names of their fathers. Some records also include the names of the witnesses.
The Archdeaconry of Rochester, Church of England, covers the western part of Kent and parts of Greater London.
Choose from selected free online events in the next five days. All times are ET except as noted. Assume registration in advance is required; check so you’re not disappointed. Find out about many more, mainly US events at Conference Keeper.
Tuesday, 6 August
2 pm: Ottawa Virtual Genealogy Drop-In, for OGS Ottawa Branch.
https://ottawa.ogs.on.ca/events/virtual-genealogy-drop-in-2-2024-08-06/
2:30 pm: I Found My German Hometown – Now What?, by Kathy Wurth for the Genealogy Center at Allen County Public Library.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/11180553
7:30 pm: Rebuilding the Body in WWI Toronto, by Kristen den Hartog. The 2024 Toronto History Lecture.
https://torontofamilyhistory.org/learn/toronto-history-lecture/
Wednesday, 7 August
2 pm: The Power of Siblings – the DNA Tests of Five Brothers by Donna Rutherford for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/the-power-of-siblings-the-dna-tests-of-five-brothers/
Thursday, 8 August
6:30 pm: Same Name More Than Once in the Same Location?
How to Decipher Who is Yours, by Emily C. Richardson for the Genealogy Center at Allen County Public Library.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/11152496
Friday, 9 August
2 pm: English Occupation, Apprenticeship and Guild Records, by Paul Milner for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/english-occupation-apprenticeship-and-guild-records/
Saturday, 10 August
A detailed account in the Castleford Women’s Institute Tweedsmuir Community History Collection describes a tornado event that hit Castleford, Ontario in June 1893. The two-page document, housed in the Arnprior & McNab/Braeside Archives, recounts significant damage to the local schoolhouse and surrounding buildings.
However, research reveals a date discrepancy. I’ve found no other records to confirm a tornado in the area during June 1893. Instead, evidence points to a notable tornado event on May 23, 1893:
It’s possible the Castleford account actually refers to this May event, with the date misremembered as June. The vivid details suggest an eyewitness account, potentially written years later from memory.
This finding highlights the importance of cross-referencing historical sources and considering how memory can affect the accuracy of eyewitness accounts over time.
Katherine Borges posted the following from meta.ai on Facebook as a warning for those using AI.
meta.ai
I apologize for the mistake. You are correct, the three citations under “Academic Papers and Research Articles” are fictional and do not exist.
I generate text based on patterns and associations in my training data, and sometimes this can lead to errors.
In this case, I attempted to create plausible-sounding citations to support the information I provided, but I clearly went too far. I should not have claimed that these sources existed or implied that they supported the information.
I strive to provide accurate and reliable information, and I appreciate you bringing this to my attention. In the future, I will be more careful and …
From my experience, when AI produces a response that is exactly what you want, too good to be true, be careful. Verify. I was given a quote from Friedrich Engels’s 1845 book The Condition of the Working Class in England that was entirely fictitious. When I checked the book, the quote was nowhere to be found.
Via Maps Mania, from University College London, how London has been seen through the eyes of Europe’s cultural luminaries by mapping some of these observations of the city.
Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.
Popular Recent YouTube Videos
| Video Title | Views per day (approx.) |
|---|---|
| Ant & Dec Track Down Their Ancestors In Ireland (PART ONE) | 23636 |
| The Irish Heroes of the US Civil War | 8000 |
| Origin Story with Gabby Douglas & Natalie Hawkins | 4400 |
| Ancestry.com Shock: Finding My Brother’s Hidden Offspring | 2500 |
| Lesley Manville’s grandad was a revolutionary! | 1800 |
| Ancestry Profile Makeover | 1667 |
Note: The “Ant & Dec” video shows an exceptionally high views per day rate due to its recency (8 hours old at the time of data collection).
Goblincore, cottagegoth (sic).
Persephone’s blog post leads me to this
.
DNA Tests Discount
Looking for a Y-DNA or mtDNA test. Family Tree DNA has discounts throughout August.
AncestryDNA’s autosomal test is $79, reduced from $129, plus taxes and shipping, until 11 August. For an extra $1, new subscribers can add a three-month World Deluxe Membership.
Weather Chat
The European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) has an experimental AI-based assistant. You can ask questions like Will it rain in Toronto on Wednesday? Get a summary chart for the next 10 days by asking for a meteogram for a city of interest.
Alan Turing to ‘answer questions’ in new AI display
Thanks to this week’s contributors: Anonymous, Brenda Turner, gail benjafield, Gillian Leitch, Nick McDonald, Teresa, Unknown.
This is one of those weeks where FMP is scraping the bottom of the barrel. Or, that could be unearthing hidden treasures if you have an ancestor among the 19,990 new records from Yorkshire this week. The 3,853 baptism records come from “parishes across Yorkshire” between 1859 and 1924. Just over sixteen thousand monumental inscriptions are from as far back as the 17th century.
Newspapers with additions before 1900 this week are the South Eastern Advertiser (Sussex) for 1861-1896, 1898-1902, 1907-1915, 1917, Belfast News-Letter, 1767, Bognor Regis Observer, 1883, 1961-1969, Lancaster Guardian, 1853-1854, 1856, 1909, 1911-1912, 1957-1967, 1975, 1988-1990, 1992, 1998, Market Rasen Weekly Mail, 1875, Rugby Advertiser, 1873, 1900, 1994-1995, 1999, 2002, and Thame Gazette, 1876, 1983-1985, 1987-1994, 2001-2003.
Four of the 153 people interred in Ottawa’s Beechwood Cemetery who died on 3 August died in 1885.
The deaths in the Ancestry record for Beechwood range from 1874 to 1988, which is 114 years. There have to be days with more than one death. How much of a coincidence is four on exactly the same day?
According to the binomial distribution, the probability is 1.13%. Four deaths on the same day would be expected on at least three days of the year.
Carrying it further, exactly 5 out of 153 people dying on the same day of the same year over 114 years is approximately 0.003, or about 0.3%. That’s about one day in the year.
Much more than that would indicate an anomaly such as an epidemic or tragedy.
You might be surprised that almost a quarter of the years, 23.7%, would have no deaths. Ancestry’s Beechwood record shows 30 years have no burials for 3 August deaths.
