Voluntary Aid Detachments (VAD’s) were formed in 1909 by the British Red Cross and the Order of St John at the request of the War Office. Both men and women provided humanitarian aid to naval and military forces at home and abroad during the war. They were trained in various roles, including nursing, transport duties, garment making, cookery, ambulance driving, and administrative work.

The “United Kingdom, Red Cross Volunteers During WWI, 1914-1918” collection is now available on Ancestry.com. It’s a resource for genealogists and family historians to delve into the lives of over 90,000 British Red Cross volunteers who served during the First World War.

The collection contains 244,156 records, handwritten on index cards, all in English. Each record may include the volunteer’s name, age at enrollment, address, county, date of enrollment, name of hospital, rank, date of discharge, honours, and a description of duties.

Registrars often added comments,  personal in nature and often containing anecdotes or details about personalityon the backs of the records. Click on the arrow to the right of the image to browse the entire record.

See the original at https://vad.redcross.org.uk/.

A fascinating education!

In Where Fact Meets Fiction: behind the scenes of a genealogical crime mystery for Legacy Family Tree Webinars, Goodwin went into the story of researching his favourite book The Sterling Affair. It’s the eighth novel in his Morton Farrier genealogical crime mystery series of ten stories that can be read as a stand-alone. Many of the genealogical resources mentioned are familiar, while others are obscure.

It’s accessible in free replay for a week at https://familytreewebinars.com/, where new subscribers can sign up for a half-price offer for the next few days.

 

Where did these originate? Likely not with Moses. He could count! This version is from 2000.

(1) Thou shalt name your male children: James, John, Joseph, Josiah, Abel, Richard, Thomas, William.
(2) Thou shalt name your female children: Elizabeth, Mary, Martha, Maria, Sarah, Ida, Virginia, May.
(3) Thou shalt leave NO trace of your female children.
(4) Thou shalt, after naming your children from the above lists, call them by strange nicknames such as: Ike, Eli, Polly, Dolly, Sukey.—making them difficult to trace.
(5) Thou shalt NOT use any middle names on any legal documents or census reports, and only where necessary, you may use only initials on legal documents.
(6)Thou shalt learn to sign all documents illegibly so that your surname can be spelled, or misspelled, in various ways: Hicks, Hickes, Hix, Hixe, Hucks, Kicks.
(7) Thou shalt, after no more then 3 generations, make sure that all family records are lost, misplaced, burned in a court house fire, or buried so that NO future trace of them can be found.
(8) Thou shalt propagate misleading legends, rumors, & vague innuendo regarding your place origination:

(A) you may have come from : England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales….or Iran.
(B) you may have American Indian ancestry of the______tribe……
(C) You may have descended from one of three brothers that came over from______.

(9) Thou shalt leave NO cemetery records, or headstones with legible names.
(10) Thou shalt leave NO family Bible with records of birth, marriages, or deaths.
(11) Thou shalt ALWAYS flip thy name around. If born James Albert, thou must make all the rest of thy records in the names of Albert, AJ, JA, AL, Bert, Bart, or Alfred.
(12) Thou must also flip thy parent’s names when making reference to them, although “Unknown” or a blank line is an acceptable alternative.

And personal additions from 2000:

(13) Thou shalt name at least 5 generations of males, and dozens of their cousins with identical names in order to totally confuse researchers:
(14) Thou shalt speak with an accent that census takers can’t understand.
(15) Thou must make sure at least one critical branch of thy family lives in the most most remote frontier regions of the country, and they must move to another area just before the census is taken.

If you’d like something more serious check out this from 2010.

Highlighted as Pick of the Month in the May issue is an online talk on 15 May from the Guild of One Name Studies. It will explain the value of solicitors’ records. Register for the free presentation Where There’s a Will, There’s a Lawyer: using solicitors records for family research at www one-name.org/solicitorrecords/

A reader panel tested Genealogy Websites Ancestry, Findmypast, MyHeritage, and TheGenealogist. Each has pros and cons. The bottom line, hardly surprising, is that Ancestry and Findmypast together lead the pack. MyHeritage, with strength outside Britain, and TheGenealogist trail in a statistical tie.

In his Best Websites column, Jonathan Scott reveals how to track down old photos of your street, your house and even your ancestors online. Lot’s of sites to explore including the London Picture Archive which has more than 250,000 images held by the London Metropolitan Archives and the Guildhall Art Gallery.

There’s lots more. Editor Sarah Williams wouldn’t want me to give too much away, but I’ll just mention another from Jonathan Scott in his Around Britain series, this issue on researching Shropshire forebears.

Does your Canadian public library provide free online access to WDYTYA magazine?

In Canada, only in Newfoundland and Labrador is 23 April significant as St. George’s Day. The public holiday celebrates the province’s British heritage. It’s observed on the nearest Monday to give a three-day weekend.

Celebrate with me under the full moon with this thoughtful article.

Hurrah for Gilbert & Sullivan: How Two 19th Century English Social Critics Can Still Teach Us Today

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 at https://conferencekeeper.org

Until 28 April, Legacy Family Tree Webinars is offering new members a one-year membership at half-off, that’s $25 US. Not to be missed — here.

Tuesday, 23 April

2 pm: Using Artificial Intelligence Tools to Expand Your Genealogical Research Universe, by James Tanner for Legacy Family Tree Webinars and MyHeritage.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/using-artificial-intelligence-tools-to-expand-your-genealogical-research-universe/

2:30 pm: DNA Relationships Explained: Known Relatives,  by Sara Allen for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/9991678

7 pm: Shamrocks, Leprechauns, and Harps: Researching Your Irish Roots, by Sarah Cochrane for OGS Wellington County Branch.
https://wellington.ogs.on.ca/events/wellington-branch-shamrocks-leprechauns-and-harps-researching-your-irish-roots

Wednesday, 24 April

2 pm: Where Fact Meets Fiction: behind the scenes of a genealogical crime mystery, by Nathan Dylan Goodwin for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/where-fact-meets-fiction-behind-the-scenes-of-a-genealogical-crime-mystery/

Thursday, 25 April

6:30 pm: How to Tap into Tax Records to Enrich Your Genealogy Research, by Jennifer Dunn for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/9989105

Friday, 26 April

7 pm: Navigating Newspapers.com, by Jenny Ashcraft for OGS Niagara Peninsula Branch.
https://niagara.ogs.on.ca/events/webinar-series-newspapers-com-jenny-ashcraft/

Saturday, 27 April

1 pm: Early Loyalists of Ontario, by Jo Ann Tuskin for Kingston and District Branch, United Empire Loyalists’ Association of Canada 
http://www.uelac.org/Kingston-Branch

 

Today is Earth Day. I wondered how genealogical organizations are doing.

Kudos to Ancestry, which last month published its 2023 Impact Report. It’s the third in an annual series documenting its progress toward “building a more connected, resilient and sustainable future for generations to come,” and organized into three main sections: ethical business practices, diversity, equity & inclusion, and community impact.

Here, I’ll focus on carbon emissions, which are reported to be reduced by 21% in 2023. That follows an emissions cut of 32.9% year-over-year in 2022.

The report includes the following table:
Scope 1 covers emissions from sources that an organisation owns or controls directly – for example from burning fuel in its fleet of vehicles (if they’re not electrically-powered).

Scope 2 are emissions that a company causes indirectly and come from where the energy it purchases and uses is produced. For example, the emissions caused when generating the electricity used in their buildings.

Scope 3 encompasses emissions that are not produced by the company itself and are not the result of activities from assets owned or controlled by them, but by those that it’s indirectly responsible for up and down its value chain. An example of this is purchase, use and dispose of products from suppliers. Scope 3 includes all sources not within the scope 1 and 2 boundaries.

For perspective, the 2023 total is the equivalent of 6,401,336
miles driven by an average gasoline-powered passenger vehicle. For an Earth Day perspective, that’s 257 times around the earth at the equator.

Some of Ancestry’s specific reductions:

“In Dublin, we moved to a new office space with a green lease in a LEED Platinum-rated building that reduced our footprint by more than 50%.”

On June 1, 2023, Ancestry added a new fulfillment center for the Eastern U.S. in Nashville, Tennessee lowering carbon emissions from U.S. shipping by more than 25%.

Those follow reductions achieved in 2022 by closure of Ancestry’s Salt Lake City office and the transition to
100% renewable energy by Scope 3 data center provider AWS.

These major reductions likely represent the low hanging fruit. A minimum 5% reduction in emissions annually is anticipated for the future.

It’s not clear whether these figures are based on independant audits and how Ancestry compares to its peer group.

 

 

The April branch meeting, open to all, will take place on Monday, 22 April, at 7:30 p.m. Alison Lau, Ancestry’s General Manager in Canada, will be in person at Lansing United Church to provide an overview of how Ancestry developed Handwriting Technology to help researchers find their ancestors in the 1931 Census of Canada. Alison and her team will also provide updates on other products and services from Ancestry Canada.

As a prelude, Marian Press will explain how two treasured pieces of family memorabilia provided clues for her family history research.

https://torontofamilyhistory.org/april-2024-meeting/

Soon after I posted about the outage, ODW services & digital collection sites were restored on 15 April. That includes Our Ontario, VITA TOOLKIT, Community Newspapers and Government Documents back in service,

The outage was caused by a ransomware attack on 25 February. Around that time, Jess Posgate of ODW gave an online presentation that I’ve had time to forget. Unfortunately, there’s no up-to-date video on ODW on YouTube to refresh my memory.

 

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

Revealing images that seemed lost forever

Who gets the most federal research funding? Danielle Smith might be surprised by what the data shows

Caring about the Past: Engaging with Historical Empathy
The 2024 Canada’s History Forum
Online Event, Thursday, April 25, 2024, 6pm – 9pm Eastern
Free to attend, but pre-registration is required.

These Words Make it Obvious That Your Text is Written By AI

Artificial Intelligence Startup Launches Ever-Expanding Library of Free Stock Photos and Music

Thanks to this week’s contributors: Anonymous, Brenda Turner, David Madeley, Empty Branches on the Family Tree, Nick Mcdonald, Sunday Thompson, Teresa, Unknown.

 

Although the end year in the title is 1949, there are now deaths for 1950 in the database. That’s 43,453 death registrations added. a couple of hundred fewer than the 43,641 deaths in 1949.

The number of deaths in this Ancestry database totals 4,200,698.

The Archives of Ontario holds death registrations to 1952.

There are currently 3,797 items in Collection Search identified as Co-Lab-only contributions, up from 3,705 last month!