Anglo-Celtic Connections

On 18 August, Ancestry updated their Index to Find a Grave version to contain 233,352,264 records. That’s a median increase of 3.5%. Increases range from 54% for Sweden to 0. 78% for the US which represents three-quarters of the total entries.

Area	Records Aug 2023	Records May 2023
US	174,219,998	172,857,217
UK and Ireland	18,201,134	16,712,454*
Global	15,090,205	14,604,632
Australia and New Zealand	11,297,318	11,044,654
Canada	9,808,392	9,646,273
Germany	2,822,677	2,520,011
Sweden	1,110,094	719,305
Italy	329,383	318,700
Norway	220,413	216,182*
Brazil	186,642	165,727
Mexico	66,008	62,956

The previous figures for UK and Ireland and Norway are for the prior March 2023 update.

The actual Find A Grave site has additional entries.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission describes the played the major role Canadian Forces played in the First World War-winning Hundred Days Offensive.
https://www.cwgc.org/our-work/blog/canada-s-hundred-days-the-canadian-contribution-to-great-war-victory/

One project report progress among the Library and Archives Canada’s Co-Lab Challenges; 14 report no progress.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary is 27% complete, was 26% complete last month.

Expo67 remains 2 % complete.

Summiting Mount Logan in 1925: Fred Lambart’s personal account of the treacherous climb and descent of the highest peak in Canada remains 13% complete.

Women in the War remains 1% complete.

Arthur Lismer’s Children’s Art Classes remains 0% complete.

John Freemont Smith remains 93% complete.

Canadian National Land Settlement Association remains 98% complete.

Molly Lamb Bobak remains 94% complete.

Diary of François-Hyacinthe Séguin remains 99% complete.

George Mully: moments in Indigenous communities remains 0% complete.

Correspondence regarding First Nations veterans returning after the First World War remains 99% complete.

Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 remains 96% complete.

Legendary Train Robber and Prison Escapee Bill Miner remains 99% complete.

Japanese-Canadians: Second World War remains 3% complete.

The Call to Duty: Canada’s Nursing Sisters remains 93% complete.

Projects that remain 100% complete are no longer reported here.

Other unidentified Co-Lab activities not part of the Challenges have seen progress. There are currently 3,718 items in Collection Search identified as Co-Lab only contributions, an increase from 3,710 last month.

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

Aerial images reveal 6,000 years of history in the South Downs

Stones made for Victorian project to help Irish workers given listed status

Saint Patrick was ‘Somerset man’

The Canadian government’s poor track record on public consultations

The Connecticut Genealogy Index
Reclaim the Records does it again. Free indexes to 576,638 births, 2,180,700 marriages, 2,086 civil unions, and 2,772,116 deaths from the state of Connecticut, spanning three centuries.

 Art, History and Race

Innovations in toilet design

Thanks to this week’s contributors: Ann Burns, Anonymous, Brenda Turner, gail benjafield, Glenn Wright, Robert Ross Halfyard, Teresa, Unknown.

This register contains the names of more than 700 soldiers from various regiments. It also details, where available, each soldier’s rank, service number, regiment, battalion number, date of admission and date of discharge (date when they officially left the hospital).

Included are 32 men serving with the Canadian Infantry or Canadian Field Artillery. Don’t rely on the transcribed name, Fairbairn became Fairburn. Fortunately regimental numbers are included.

Ancestry uploaded the data from PRONI at  https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/royal-victoria-hospital-register-1914-1916

Focus this week is BMB records from the ancient rural English county of Herefordshire. The Leintwardine History Society transcribed some of the records from original records. Other portions comes from the Herefordshire FHS and FamilySearch’s International Genealogical Index.

Baptisms
This addition is 231,270 parish baptisms from 1433 to 1950. From Abbey Dore to Yazor, the 269 parishes total is 906,149 records with Hereford city parishes accounting for over 53 thousand. Ross, Bromyard, Leominster, Ledbury, Cradley, Madley, Kington, Bosbury, Much Marcle, Lyonshall, Walford, Leintwardine, Pembridge, Mordiford and Kingsland each account for more than 10,000 baptisms in the collection.

Marriages
Additions are 86,782 records from 1433 to 1949. The marriage collection total is now 584,267 records from 707 places.

Burials
With the additional burials the total is now 337,974 from 1541  to 1995.

Newspapers
The collection has reached the 70 million page mark with three new Welsh and six updated English titles.

Today is the anniversary of the one-day Dieppe Raid in 1942, in which 916 Canadians died. Unlike the commemoration of battles at Juno Beach and Vimy Ridge, both of which are marked by impresssive named bridges in Ottawa, the best we can do for Dieppe is a non-descript dead-end street in Vanier.

This month’s update is short. In the past month, the only additions to the newspapers.com collection are 14 US newspapers, six of those Kansas-based.

This collection, new to Ancestry, for Britain’s second-largest city contains 1,394,768 records from 1836 to 2017.

Cemeteries included are Brandwood End, Handsworth, Key Hill, Kings Norton, Lodge Hill (and crematorium), Quinton, Sutton Coldfield, (and crematorium), Sutton New Hall, Warstone Lane, Witton, Yardley (and crematorium).

An Ancestry search returns index data: the deceased name, month of burial/cremation, year of burial/cremation, and cemetery. This is freely available from the Birmingham City Council at https://birminghamburialrecords.co.uk/ . There you have the option of paying £10 for a digital download of the following information which may (although not always) be shown on the image:

Number of Entry (Burial/Cremation Number)
Description of person buried/interred
Rank or profession (occupation)
Age
Sex
Marital Status
Late residence/place where death occurred
Date of burial/cremation
Date of death
By whom the ceremony/service was performed (Officiating Minister; Sometimes including Funeral Director)
Registrars signature
By whom the certificate was given (persons signing certificates)
Grant or reference number
Place of Burial/Cremation (Section/Class within the Cemetery)
Number of Grave (Plot number within the Section/Class within the Cemetery)
Whether the deceased is in consecrated or unconsecrated ground (occasionally including Special, Free Church and Roman Catholic ground)
Description of grave and charges (occasionally including grave depth)
If Pauper – The Union
Fees
Receipt Number
Parish/District
Method of disposal of ashes
Remarks

 

This collection includes 284,675 transcription records for the counties of Cheshire, Durham, Essex, Gloucestershire, Kent, Middlesex (including London), Norfolk, Surrey, Sussex, Warwickshire, Westmorland, Yorkshire, and Pembrokeshire between the years 1662 and 1674.

Records typically include the name of the head of the household and the date and place of residence.

The collection was made public by the Universities of Graz and Roehampton. Their website at https://gams.uni-graz.at/context:htx briefly introduces the Hearth Tax, project background, and complimentary access to the records.

You can explore over 400,000 digitized photos online from over 6 million aerial photographs preserved in the Historic England Archive.
The latest addition is a USAAF collection of over 20,000 photographs that record airfields, military bases, towns, and countryside in England between 1943 and 1944. An interactive map gives access to over 3,600 photographs from the USAAF Collection. These can also be viewed on the larger Historic England Aerial Photo Explorer map.