Anglo-Celtic Connections

Checking for new resources at canadiana.ca, there were none, a pop-up survey appeared. It was short. Genealogy was a prominent response option. It ended by asking for email address if interested in providing further input.

If you go to canadiana.ca and the survey pops up, please respond to reinforce the significance and potential significance of the site for genealogy.

Genealogical Query Optimization (GQO) is the process of crafting a clear, concise, and effective question that will help you find genealogical information. A well-written query can save you time and frustration. It will attract the attention and assistance of others who may have relevant knowledge or resources. It can also serve as cousin bait.

Here are tips on GQO:

• Start by considering where to send your query. Where is it likely to be seen by those with expertise in the area(s) of interest? Is it geographically specific? Does it relate to a specialist occupation, religious or military group? Try a Facebook page, or a local family history or other specialist society forum.
• Start your query by selecting a person and write a heading that summarizes your question. Include their name, time period, and location. For example, “Seeking information on the origins of John Smith , born c. 1837 in either Liverpool, Lancashire, England or Kilkeel, County Down, Ireland, died 1914 in Carmarthen, Wales.”
• Provide adequate background information. Give the full name, known by names, dates and places of their birth, marriage, death, and other significant events. Depending on the query parent, sibling, spouse, children and other FAN club people should be mentioned. Be selective — don’t swamp with detail, espcially irrelevencies no matter how fascinating! Less can be  more. Make detail available by linking to a family tree or other resource.
• If trying to resolve conflicting evidence, as above, mention it. In my case he’s listed as born in Liverpool in the Welsh censuses for 1881, 1891 and 1901 censues, but in Kilkeel in the 1911 Welsh census. Also, mention resources you have already tried that didn’t help. In my case he has not been found in the censuses of 1841 to 1871.
• GQO is a skill.  Frame your query in a straightforward manner so that the person reading it can quickly and clearly understand the situation. Any response that isn’t spam deserves a friendly, polite reply. Keep anyone who expresses continuing interest in the loop.

If you’re seeking additional advice have a look at The Dos & Don’ts of an Effective Genealogy Query, Writing a Query and Writing an Effective Genealogical Query

From MyHeritage, 371,696 records for those serving in the British Army and Air Force in 1920.

Information is sparse. It usually only has the first name, initials, last name, and various service numbers, but it does include the date of birth.

I’d forgotten how drastically the forces were reduced from WW1 when over 3 million.

UK Ordnance Survey Maps, published in 1973, came out of copyright on 1 January 2024. The National Library of Scotland was on the ball, making 1,868 maps at scales of 1:1,250 to 1:10,560 available online. These include 1,151 detailed maps at scales of 1:1,250 and 1:2,500 covering areas in Scotland, and 717 less detailed maps at scales of 1:10,000/1:10,560 covering areas in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. More detailed maps for other areas are coming.

This month NLS also added a Woodland in Scotland map viewer, 1840s-1880s.

Read more at https://maps.nls.uk/additions/#155

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Choose from selected free (except OGS Thursday event free only to members) 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 at https://conferencekeeper.org

Tuesday 9 January

2 pm: Ottawa Virtual Genealogy Drop-in. Ottawa Branch OGS.
https://ottawa.ogs.on.ca/events/virtual-genealogy-drop-in-2-2024-01-09/

2 pm: The Latest Photo Feature from MyHeritage, by Tal Erlichman for MyHeritage and Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/the-latest-photo-feature-from-myheritage/

2:30 pm: Saving Your Memories One Photo at a Time, by Tabitha O’Connor for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/9721543

Wednesday 10 January

7 pm: ACGSI Hybrid Program: Citing Sources Without Stressing Out, by Amy Johnson Crow for Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana.
https://www.acgsi.org/
Check out the handout at https://www.acgsi.org/handout.pdf

8 pm: A military heritage: Finding your British army lineage in pre-20th century records, by Cathie Sherwood for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/a-military-heritage-finding-your-british-army-lineage-in-pre-20th-century-records/

Thursday 11 January

Friday 12 January

Saturday 13 January

5:30 am: Using First World War Army Records, by Will Butler for The National Archives (UK).
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/visit-us/whats-on/online-events/

9 am: Back to Basics: Scotland, presented by Ken McKinlay

10 am: You’ve Got Mail: Rent and Associated Agricultural Terminology in Scottish Records, circa 1500-1750, by Robert Urquhart.

British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa (online only)
https://www.bifhsgo.ca/events

Here’s the letter I had published on page A13, column a in Saturday’s Ottawa Citizen.

Library service is failing

I am deeply concerned about the state of our city’s infrastructure and services. With successive years of sub-inflation funding, we’re living the two-centuries-old wisdom of Benjamin Franklin: “The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.”

A glaring example is our Ottawa Public Library, which fails to meet the needs and expectations of our growing and diverse community. Compared to readers in other Canadian cities, we travel further to a branch, especially in urban areas where many low-income and marginalized residents live. The alternative services that are supposed to fill the gap, such as bookmobiles and lockers, are unreliable and inadequate. No wonder the number of library cardholders is failing to keep up with our growing population.

The Library Board needs to lead and address issues that affect the quality and accessibility of the service. The City Council, which funds the library service, needs to be informed and involved in finding solutions and allocating resources. The library service is not a luxury, but a necessity for our community’s education, culture, and well-being.

John D. Reid, Ottawa

This is a shoutout to John Grenham’s first blog post for 2024
Catholic Parish Map Confession in which he reveals what some would consider issues with parish boundaries.
Although no expert, I do wonder how significant the boundaries are. Was anyone turned away from a service because they lived in the wrong parish? Is it possible a priest would think a neighbouring parish was poaching their parishioners?

If two presentations in one week are anything to judge by, AI will be a major for genealogy this year.

Nicely complementing Steve Little’s “Artificial Intelligence and Genealogy: New Beginnings in 2024” mentioned previously, available for free at Legacy Family Tree Webinars until Tuesday, is this presentation by Senior Genealogist Melanie McComb from American Ancestors.

Melanie looks in some detail at using AI to support your research—including assistance with summarizing, report writing, digitally restoring family photos, and more. She reinforces Steve Little in addressing aspects of AI that genealogists should be cautious of, such as accuracy and copyright concerns.

I paused the playback of this video to try Free Online OCR – Image to text and PDF to Doc converter at https://www.onlineocr.net. It worked well.

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

Therefore Let Us Not Be Silly
Troll news and yellow journalism run amok. In 2024, we can change. By Justin Ling

Predictions for 2024
Bari Weiss interviews Niall Ferguson, John McWhorter, Tyler Cowen, Peter Attia, Nate Silver, and others about the year to come. Long. US-centric. If the link doesn’t work try this.

It is not given to human beings – happily for them, for otherwise life would be intolerable – to foresee or to predict to any large extent the unfolding course of events.

                                   Winston Churchill

2023: MyHeritage Year in Review

Amateur Family Genealogists Researching Their Family History: A Scoping Review of Motivations and Psychosocial Impacts

What to expect at CES 2024
The Consumer Electronics Show starts in Las Vegas on Tuesday. Bidet with Alexa and Google anyone?

Sometimes the planets align to drag you down a rabbit hole.

I’ve recently been researching the ancestry of my niece’s husband in County Durham.

I’ve also been reading the book The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, by Deborah Blum. It includes a brief reference to murder by arsenic in the UK.

In fact, handled with skill by a calculating murderer, the poison seemed to engender a homicidal overconfidence. in 1872, one notorious British murderer, Mary Ann Cotton, killed 15 people (according to some sources it could be as many as 21) , including all the children of her five husbands, and several neighbours who irritated her, before she was caught in 1872, tried and hung.

They came in conjunction when I found the scene of Cotton’s crimes was County Durham. 

There’s a fascinating past episode on Cotton in the BBC Radio Four series Lady Killers with Lucy Worsley available on BBC Sounds. More episodes are coming.

I’ve not been able to link any of Cotton’s victims, all but six male, to the family I’m researching, except by geography. Maybe if I dig further I’ll be able to add the story to his family history.

There’s a mixed bag of military records this week. Should you be lucky enough to find a person of interest, the records are sufficiently obscure that you are likely to find new information about them.

British Army, Coldstream Guards 1800-1981
17,896 photo album records and 497 attestations are added between 1800 and 1981. The majority of these records comprise a digitized image and a transcript which serves as a finding aid for that image. There is one enlistment register for 1915, covering the regimental numbers 16055 to 18093, for which there are no images.

British Army, London Regiment, Surrey Battalions 1914-1940
3,517 new records spanning from 1914 to 1940.

British Army Service Records – South Wales Borderers
698 transcriptions are added to an existing service record collection from the South Wales Borderers regiment between 1890 and 1915.