Anglo-Celtic Connections

Is it salt air or sea sickness that the cover illustration of the new issue of Internet Genealogy brings to mind?
In Researching Your Mariner Ancestors Diane L. Richard looks at early 19th century, mostly US port records that document mariners.
In Their Words: “Memoires and
Autobiographies”: Sue Lisk shows you how to locate valuable information to help you better understand your ancestors’ lives.
1931 Canadian Census: Dave Obee searches for his grandparents in the newly-released 1931 Canadian Census emphasizing the insights of looking beyond your immediate family.
Ancestral Movements in Britain and Beyond: Michelle Dennis examines the many reasons for our ancestors to relocate.
Must-See Genealogy TV — For Free!: Robbie Gorr goes on a genealogy TV channel surfing safari. Includes many I didn’t know about and where to find them.
Colonial and Early Wills: David A. Norris looks at Colonial and 19th century wills and estate papers.
Online British Newspapers: Ed Storey looks at what you can find in online British newspapers. Surprisingly there’s no mention of newspapers.com/.
One Photograph: The Value of Paying Close Attention: Meredith Young Renard reveals how looking carefully at a photo can pay off.
Review: Take Better Notes with FreeForm: Lisa A. Alzo reviews a powerful Mac-based note-taking app.
In Tribute: Paths of Remembrance: Sue Lisk looks at the some of the ways ancestors might be memorialized.
Vacation Commonalities of Our Ancestors: Lynn Cassity looks at why our ancestors needed to document their time away
Answering the “Where Do I Go From Here?” Question:
The Allen County Public Library offers some good website suggestions to assist you.
Connecting the Threads: from Generation to Generation: Karen L. Newman looks at the enduring popularity of quilting
NetNotes: Diane L. Richard looks at websites and related
news that are sure to be of interest.
A Peek Behind the Scenes at Who Do You Think You Are? (U.K. edition): Dave Obee.

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. Looking for more options? Additional mainly US events are listed at https://conferencekeeper.org/virtual.

Tuesday 15 August

This is a free app, available from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. Among other things, it has an augmented reality capability providing a tour of various Commonwealth War Graves Commission sites.

The augmented reality system is initially available for these cemeteries in England, Scotland and Wales — Brookwood Military Cemetery, Cambridge City Cemetery, Cannock Chase War Cemetery, Cardiff (Cathays) Cemetery, Edinburgh (Comely Bank) Cemetery, Harrogate (Stonefall) Cemetery, Manchester Southern Cemetery, Seaford Cemetery, Plymouth Naval Memorial and Tower Hill Memorial. More are to come. For aumented reality to operate you have to be there!

https://www.cwgc.org/our-work/news/explore-our-sites-through-augmented-reality/

The app, which is not a CWGC product, also provides information on other sites, in Ottawa, the Korean memorial (not CWGC) and Beechwood Cemetery. Below is a short video explaining Memory Anchor, directed more at providers than those seeking information.

MyHeritage just released this feature that uses AI technology to estimate the year a photo was taken.

It looks at nuances such as clothing, hairstyles, facial hair, and other objects characteristic of a particular decade. After a few seconds an estimated year the photo was taken appears. There’s also a confidence level and average error range. Now available for desktop and laptops, a phone app is promised, 

There’s detailed information in the blog post Introducing PhotoDater™, an Exclusive, Free New Feature to Estimate When Old Photos Were Taken.

Sometimes a year estimate cannot be displayed. MyHeritage will not display estimates that lack confidence, I’d rather have no estimate than a poor one.

 

With this latest Ancestry update, England and Wales Death Index, 1989-2022, has 6,947,083 entries.

Scotland and Northern Ireland, Death Index, 1989-2022
now has 897,449 entries.

A search provides name, gender, age, birth date, last residence (town), postal code district and death date. The source is not specified but appears to be compilations from unofficial records, such as funeral homes and newspapers,  from GreyPower Deceased Data and Wilmington Millennium, West Yorkshire. I estimate it covers about half the deaths occurring.

A digital humanities project that “models existing data into life events and then digitally links all these related events to reconstruct a searchable prosopography or biographical map of the entire settler cohort.”

Prosopography is a description of a person’s social and family connections, career, etc., or a collection of such descriptions.

Scroll down at https://ulster-settlers.clericus.ie/ for a video on Navigating the Database.

 

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

A J Casson Jigsaw
https://jigex.com/uXTH

Doug Ford’s Greenbelt mess is just the latest example of his disdain for rules

Rigorous Science – Wilfrid Derome
Forensics pioneer. Canada’s History magazine on the life and work of Dr Wilfrid Derome (1877-1931). Interred in Montreal’s Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery.

New London Quakers: A Coda
The latest blog post from The Canadian Friends Historical Association. The Assocation website includes a mass of open access publications and documents relating to Canadian Quaker history, including transcriptions of handwritten meeting books going back to 1798.

TheGenealogist adds Lloyd George Land Tax Records for Oxfordshire

Sad to note the passing of BIFHSGO member Chuck Taylor

Five little-known inventors of the Victorian era

Thanks to this week’s contributors: Ann Burns, Anonymous, Brenda Turner, Daniel Horowitz, gail benjafield, Glenn Wright, Ken McKinlay, Nick McDonald, Nick Thorne, Patricia McGregor, Teresa, Susan Courage, Unknown.

 

 

These are the annual update as records come out of the embargo period.

Birmingham, England, Church of England Baptisms, 1813-1922, now with 2,943,642 records.

Birmingham, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1939, now with 1,740,297 records.

Birmingham, England, Church of England Burials, 1813-1964, now with 536,245 records.

This collection of genealogical abstracts from Ireland has over one million entries, a significant addition to the available Irish resources, especially for early years. According to the Ancestry information, most pertain to wills and marriage bonds, and some miscellaneous abstracts are included. I found many indicated as “residence.”

The collection appears to have been indexed by AI handwriting recognition technology.

Testing with the surname Marmion found 30 hits with both first and last names. Ten were event-type residence, 18 wills, one marriage, and one death. Eight had additional information on event dates or relatives in the listing.

Each hit is linked to an image of the original page or a two-page image. Given my mediocre paleographic skills, I struggled to find the corresponding entry in the original. It would be helpful if it were highlighted and a transcription of the whole page was available with the hit highlighted.

Focus this week is on Derbyshire, with 450,00 new parish records. They are mainly transcripts, a few include images. They are not only from the Established Church (CofE). Baptist, various Methodist, Presbyterian and Independant congregations are included.

Baptisms
231,270 new records from across the county for the years 1524 to 1991. The total is now 1,237,175 records for 324 parishes

Marriages
114,294 added records, now totalling 776,313. Many of the early records have no last name for the bride.

Burials
108,015 new records, from 1539 to 1997.

These collections are published in partnership with Derbyshire Family History Society, the Family History Federation and FamilySearch.

Newspapers
The week also saw 155,862 pages added to eight titles.
Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, 1780, 1794
Croydon Express, 1912
Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 1970, 1972, 1977-1979
Lichfield Post, 1991
Liverpool Echo, 1968
London Daily Chronicle, 1886, 1889, 1923, 1926, 1929
South Wales Echo, 1912
Wexford and Kilkenny Express, 1900

Each year organizations federally registered as charities in Canada for tax purposes are required to file returns with the Canada Revenue Agency. Financial and other information is available on the Revenue Canada website. Search for individual society reports at
https://apps.cra-arc.gc.ca/ebci/hacc/srch/pub/dsplyBscSrch?request_locale=en.

Two societies, AGS and OGS, reported substantial financial donation in 2022.

Figures for the previous financial period (usually calendar year) follow the most recent in parentheses.

Alberta Genealogical Society

For the reporting period ending 2022-12-31, total assets of $1,041,398 ($590,395) and liabilities of $212,232 ($175,854.) The total revenue was $614,488 ($188,456.) That included an extraordinary item, a charitable tax eligible gift or gifts, totalling $422,882.  Expenditures totalled 199,863 ($183,798). The individual annual membership fee remains $50 for digital journal subscription. 

British Columbia Genealogical Society

For the reporting period ending 2022-12-31, total assets of $216,503 ($233,931) and liabilities of $20,517 ($37,201.) The total revenue was $27,392 ($29,895.) Expenditures totalled $28,201 ($29,895). The individual annual new membership fee remins $65.

Family History Society of Newfoundland and Labrador Inc

For the reporting period ending 2022-12-31, total assets of $78,308 ($80,912) and no liabilities. The total revenue was $32,500 ($35,743.) Expenditures totalled $34,912 ($27,526.) The individual annual membership fee remains $42.

Manitoba Genealogical Society

For the reporting period ending 2023-03-31 information is not yet posted. The individual annual membership fee is $60 ($50.)

For the reporting period ending 2021-12-31, total assets of $2,034,220 ($1,577,182) and liabilities of $280,466 ($271,019,) The total revenue was $1,004,580 ($552,102.) That included an extraordinary item, a gift or gifts, totalling $651,492.  Expenditures totalled  $556,489 ($518,402.) The individual annual membership fee remains $63.

For the reporting period ending 2021-07-31, total assets of $18,985 ($24,235) and liabilities of $4,593 ($7,260.) The total revenue was $29,203 ($43,066.) Expenditures totalled $31,785 ($31,269.) The individual annual fee remains at $75.

For the reporting period ending 2022-12-31 information is not posted. Individual basic annual membership remains $70.

For the reporting period ending 2022-12-31 information is not yet posted.

For the reporting period ending 2023-05-31 information is not yet posted. Individual annual membership remains $60.

Look for this post to be updated when reports for the five societies with 2022 information missing are added.

A FamilySearch collection, “Wills and deed records from the United States, 1630-1975,” was recently the subject of an experimental research project. One hundred and ten million records processed by handwriting recognition technology were opened up for searching.  Several people tried it before the experiment was closed and posted about their experience and enthusiasm on Reddit,”. A YouTube post by GenealogyTechnology demonstrated using it.

If you want to know more, the RootsTech presentation Advances in Computer Assisted Indexing of Historical Records by John Alexander from FamilySearch provides a helpful backgrounder.

In Canada, we benefitted from Ancestry’s index to the 1931 census completed in 2 days. The release was delayed for quality control.

The day is coming when AI interpretation of handwritten records will be something we can apply ourselves to a collection where online images are available. What Canadian records would you want to use it for?