Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

Latin Wind Directions

Putting the history in family history…

Scottish Society for Northern Studies
Northern Studies is the peer-reviewed journal of the Society. Like many organizations, back issues are freely available. A couple of articles of particular interest:
The Climatic Motive for Leaving Scotland, c. 1770 – c. 1890 in Northern Studies 53 (2022)
Vestur-Íslendingar: The Icelanders of Manitoba
Northern Studies 50 (2019)

The Biographical Dictionary of Nurses from Ireland in Service on the Home Front and on Allied Battle Fronts during the Second World War, 1939-1945
A free pdf from PRONI.

Fusion Energy
There’s recent progress. While growth of renewable energy generation (wind and solar) has gradually chipped away at fossil fuel market share, the successful commercialization of fusion energy is an existential risk for the fossil fuel industry.

TheGenealogist has released 225,395 heads of households and property owners from the 1910-1915 Lloyd George Domesday Survey,  extending Home Counties coverage to Surrey.
Availability of these IR 58 Landowner and Occupier records now total over 2.6 million — all the boroughs of Greater London plus Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Oxfordshire, Middlesex, Northamptonshire and with this release, Surrey.
The records give the names of owners and occupiers of each property and can provide detailed descriptions of the numbers and types of rooms in the house, plus what it was constructed of and the extent of its garden or grounds.

Enhanced Genealogical Data From Oxford Dictionary Of National Biography
This new collection contains 4,013 images and transcriptions supplementing the 32,866 of the Britain, Dictionary Of National Biography, 1885-1904.

It indexes the names of people mentioned who are not the primary subject of the biography. Every record will have a brief transcript and an image of the full entry. The transcript includes the name, birth year, status, and reference person.

This FMP content is historical. The current DNB, with an additional 120 years has over 65,000 biographies, and 12,000 portraits of significant, influential or notorious figures. It was recently updated with biographies of 276 men and women who died in the year 2020.

Lancashire Wills & Probate 1457-1858
This collection with 5,803 new records relating to ‘Infra Wills’, that is, estates valued at less than £40. If Lancashire ancestor passed down a small sum to their next of kin in the early 19th century, their name may just appear within this updated collection.

The collection now comprises 301,771 records. Original records are held at the Lancashire Record Office plus a small collection of records created by the Lancashire and Cheshire Records Society. These records include an image of the index books published by the society.

Most records contain: name, status or occupation, event date, place, Deanery, county, volume number, volume description, archive and reference, document ordering link.

Surrey Prerogative Court Will Abstracts, 1420-1857
This week’s biggest record update consists of 11,308 Surrey will abstracts, transcriptions and images, from the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, spanning 1700 to 1858.

Each record contains a transcript of the index to the original wills. The information given varies but you can find out name, residence, names of beneficiaries, relationship to the testator (who wrote the will), and the date of the will.

 

The FreeBMD Database was updated on Thursday, 25 April 2024, to contain 290,683,241 unique entries, up from 290,487,882 on 26 March.

The years with more than 10,000 new entries are 1992, 1993, 1995 for births, 1992, 1994 for marriages, and 1993, 1995 for deaths.

 

A recent blog post from FamilyTreeDNA, the first in a five-part series, delves into the importance of mitochondrial DNA in genealogical research. The unique inheritance, only passed down from mother to child, aids genealogists to follow the maternal thread through generations.
The blog post covers the changes, including transitions, transversions, reversions, insertions, deletions, and heteroplasmies, that create distinct patterns that can be used to identify genetic connections.

https://blog.familytreedna.com/what-is-mtdna/

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.