Anglo-Celtic Connections

James Powell’s latest blog post in Today in Ottawa’s History is the story of William James Topley, a giant of nineteenth-century Canadian photography. LAC holds the vast Topley archive; look to it for photos of Ottawa’s and Parliament’s elites; purchased in 1936 for $3,000.
https://todayinottawashistory.wordpress.com/2024/12/07/william-j-topley-studio/

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week

Victorian Christmases were both thrifty and indulgent – try these DIY projects and yours could be too

First Four RootsTech 2025 Keynote Speakers Announced

Finding Your British WWI Soldier — Dead or Alive
I recommend Paul Milner’s presentation for Legacy Family Tree Webinars, free to all until Tuesday.

The Greater Sudbury Public Library was awarded the Vivid-Pix Memory Station system, which was donated to the Ontario genealogy community in June at the OGS Conference.

Legacy Family Tree Webinars have extended the last date for their 50% off offer for new subscriptions to today, Sunday, 8 December 2024.

National Library of Scotland YouTube Videos

GenCast
An article in the journal Nature discussed GenCast, a new AI weather prediction model from Google DeepMind. It is reported to be more accurate than today’s best operational forecast model from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting.  Oversimplifying it’s a multidimensional analogy technique. Analogy forecasting has a long history – see this article from 1901.I look forward to an independent evaluation and real-time GenCast forecasts becoming publicly available.

How close is AI to human-level intelligence?
AI hasn’t yet achieved the broad, flexible reasoning that humans naturally possess. Significant progress is being made, but a fully human-like AI remains a future possibility rather than a current reality.

Thanks to this week’s contributors: Ann Burns, Anonymous, Brenda Turner, Bruce Elliott, Gail, Glenn Wright, Julia, Marg, Nick Mcdonald,  Teresa, and Unknown.

TheGenealogist has announced the release of the complete 1910 Lloyd George Domesday survey records for Kent. It covers over 1,400 square miles and documents nearly half a million individuals and organizations.

This release brings the total coverage of the Lloyd Geoge Domesday to 8,600 Square miles and over 3.7 Million individuals and organizations covering London, Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Oxfordshire, Middlesex, Northamptonshire, Surrey, and Wiltshire.

On 4 December, I mentioned using the FamilySearch Experimental Full-Text Search to find a record of my two-time great-grandfather, William Henry Northwood. He took out US citizenship on 8 June 1887 in Leavenworth, Kansas. 

Shortly afterwards, I found more about him thanks to a collection of names and stories on MyHeritage. AI extracted it from OldNews.com newspaper pages found in the Fort Griffin (Texas) Echo of 1 November 1879.

Now available, based on newspapers, are:
658 million records from Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi,
998 million records from Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and Nebraska,
1 billion records for Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania,
651 million records from North Carolina, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia.

More is coming. Expected to be published this month are 16 similar collections “covering the entire United States and several additional countries.”

It’s a good bet that Canadian newspapers will be included. MyHeritage already has a Canada Newspapers, 1752-2007 collection, originating from Google’s abandoned newspaper digitization initiative. That goes back to Ottawa-based Paper of Record. Stay tuned.

According to Daniel Horowitz of MyHeritage “This AI is designed to extract not just names from the newspaper articles but also the relatives of every person mentioned, as well as additional fields such as occupations, residences, travel from one location to another, and more.”

Find out more in this MyHeritage blog post.

 

Southwark Rate Books
These 12,83,820 new Southwark rate book records list the names of occupiers and owners, value, and whether the property was rented or owned. 

Southwark Poor Law Records
The collection includes examination books, removal orders, poor relief payments, and more — 82,455 Southwark records covering the 1630s to the 1860s. Images of the original record are available together with transcript information. Find a combination of: Name, Event date, Age, Birth year, Occupation, Marital Status, Residence, Parish remove to, Father’s name, Spouse’s name, Children’s name, Master’s name. With advancing technology, is Findmypast looking at how searchable transcriptions of the full text can be made available.

Greater London Marriage Index
25,980 marriage records have been added from Westminster, Bromley-by-Bow, and the East End to the existing collection. There are now 487,476 marriages in the collection from 123 places. Dates range from 1502 to 1871. Anglican, Non-conformists, and Quaker marriages are included.

 

The three feature articles for this special Christmas issue are:

No Laughing Matter: The Battle of Arnhem
The comedian, podcaster and historian Al Murray discusses his new book Arnhem: BlackTuesday: The Classic Battle Told As Never Before. The material was covered in a podcast and on YouTube at We Have Ways of Making You Talk.

Census Websites
Sarah Williams searches Ancestry, Findmypast and
TheGenealogist to find out which is best for the census. One edges out the other two.

A Childhood Christmas 
Caroline Roope explores the origins of the much-loved Christmas traditions, from nativity plays, pantomimes, hanging up stockings, and much more.

The articles categorized as Reseatch Advice are:

Focus On
Dr Simon Wills reveals the history of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, and how to search a free collection of records released online 200 years after its creation.

Best Websites
Jonathan Scott rounds up the online resources for audio and video that bring our forebears’ place and time to life. FirstSounds brings back to life some rare recordings on all but unplayable formats.

Record Masterclass
Nicola Morris explains how to find your Irish ancestors’ school records, many of which are available digitally

Tecn Tips
Nick Peers shares his expert advice for using the Findmypast mobile app to improve your online tree

There’s also a Canadian article, inspired by a 1888 Christmas letter from Harriet Bullock in Montreal, who was an early campaigner for women’s rights.

This collection features hundreds of thousands of index cards, 455,695 to be precise, created by the Society of Antiquaries. They link coats of arms to family names between 1150 and 1850.

Each card includes descriptions of coats of arms and associated genealogical details, such as names and dates(of birth?). According to the description, occupations, family connections, and other things may also be included. The small sample I viewed showed none of these.

This card collection was the basis for the Dictionary of British Arms, published in four volumes, which appear to be freely available through the Internet Archive.

A search for records from 1625 to 2024 has 710,339,386 results, up from 540,972,674 on 24 November.
Almost all are for the US, which accounts for 657,121,018, or 93% of the results.
Despite having very little US ancestry, the addition did fill a gap, providing a record of my two-times great-grandfather, William Henry Northwood, taking out US citizenship on 8 June 1887 in Leavenworth, Kansas.

UPDATE
In episode 19 of the Family History AI Show,  just released, Mark Thompson and Steve Little rate the FamilySearch Full Test Search as the top AI breakthrough for genealogists in 2024.

Choose from selected free online events today. All times are ET except as noted. Assume registration in advance is required; check so you’re not disappointed. Find out about a few more, mainly US events, at Conference Keeper.

Tuesday, 3 December

8 pm: Finding Your British WWI Soldier – Dead or Alive, by Paul Milner for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/finding-your-british-wwi-soldier-dead-or-alive/

2:30 pm: Did Grandpa Work in the Tree Army? by Ronald L. Darrah for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/12188917

Wednesday, 4 December

2 pm: DNA Case Study: Reconstructing A Family Tree Using DNA, by Michelle Leonard for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/dna-case-study-reconstructing-a-family-tree-using-dna/

2:30 pm: The British High Street at Christmas, by Annie Gray for The National Archives (UK).
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-british-high-street-at-christmas-tickets-998466248427?aff=oddtdtcreator

Thursday, 5 December

7 pm: Family Bibles And How To Locate Those Of Your |
Ancestors, by Greg Hilton for OGS.( Free to OGS members)
https://ogs.on.ca/

Friday, 6 December

2 pm: The Trifecta: Giving Light to the Lives of the Formerly Enslaved, by Nicka Smith for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/the-trifecta-giving-light-to-the-lives-of-the-formerly-enslaved/

Saturday 7 December

10 am: Delve into the Lives of your Middlesex County Ancestors through the ~~ 1931 Census, by Katherine Lake Hogan for OGS London and Middlesex Branch.
http://www.londonmiddlesex.ogs.on.ca/events

1:30 pm: The Rural Diary Archive: Transcribing Daily Life in Eastern Ontario, by Catharine Wilson for Lanark County Genealogical Society. 
https://lanarkgenealogy.com/about-lcgs/meetings-special-events/upcoming-meetings/

Every year, Legacy Family Tree Webinars offers a 50% off membership on Black Friday/Cyber Monday. That’s a one-year membership for $24.98 USD, giving unlimited access to all the recorded webinars and more at www.FamilyTreeWebinars.com.

It’s the best deal in family history.

The price is valid for new memberships until  Friday, 6 December 2024.

OGS Leeds & Grenville Branch invites us to usher in the Christmas season with some family history stories!

Plan on joining on Zoom on Monday, 2 December, at 7:00 pm for a Show and Share experience!

https://leedsandgrenville.ogs.on.ca/events/leeds-grenville-branch-december-2024-genealogy-december-event-show-and-share/

 

Coming in January for early-birds, four Saturday morning online presentations from The National Archives (UK). They start at 10:30 am GMT, which is 5:30 am ET.

Saturday, 4 January
Using Discovery, The National Archives’ online catalogue
Join this webinar to get to grips with our online catalogue. As a portal into history, our catalogue is an essential research tool, holding over 37 million descriptions of records that date back hundreds of years.

Saturday, 11 January 
Researching your local history
Find out how to start researching your local history in this expert-led webinar. Discover the types of records held at The National Archives and beyond that can help you learn more about the past of your local area.

Saturday, 18 January
Researching your family history: wills
Explore the wonderful world of wills with our expert guidance. You’ll learn how to use wills to discover fascinating insights into the lives of your ancestors and how to find these wills in our collection.

Saturday, 25 January
Researching your family history: 20th century sources
Discover more about the lives of your ancestors by learning about the key 20th-century sources you can use to trace your family history, including the 1911 and 1921 censuses and the 1939 register.