Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2019 i Who Do You Think You Are?

Ever since the much-loved event Who Do You Think You Are? Live came to an end, family historians have been looking for a replacement. That’s why I’m so excited about RootsTech coming to London, because I think it’s what we’ve all been waiting for. Celebrities, informative talks, expert one-to-ones, DNA advice and lots of special offers – what’s not to love? Come and join the fun at ExCeL on 24–26 October and, while you are there, pop by our stand and say hello. You won’t want to miss it! Meanwhile we’ve been keeping ourselves busy sourcing the best family history advice to share with you all. Whether you’re stuck on a particular line of research and need some tips to overcome your brick wall (page 16) or you’re thinking about…

SIMON FOWLER Simon (AKA The History Man) is a professional genealogist who has broken down more than his fair share of brick walls. Turn to page 16 to find out how he does it and pick up some tips. DEBBIE KENNETT DNA testing is changing family history, but for many of us it is rather a ‘dark art’. Luckily we have DNA expert Debbie who this month explains the benefits of Y-DNA tests (page 24). REBECCA PROBERT Rebecca is a law professor at Exeter University and author of Marriage Law for Genealogists. On page 63 she reveals the many records we can use to trace family nuptials.…

EDITORIAL Editor Sarah Williams Production editor Seth Burgess Staff writer Rosemary Collins Art editor Robbie Bennie Contributor Nell Darby ADVERTISING SALES Ad manager Sam Jones 0117 300 8145 Ad sales executive Andy Williams 0117 300 8803 Inserts Laurence Robertson 00 353 876 902208 MARKETING Marketing manager Kellie Lane Direct marketing executive Craig Ramsay PRESS AND PR Head of PR Dominic Lobley PRODUCTION Production director Sarah Powell Production co-ordinator Emily Mounter Ad design Parvin Sepehr Ad co-ordinator Bryony Grace SYNDICATION & LICENSING Director of licensing & syndication Tim Hudson Magazine syndication executive Emma Brunt IMMEDIATE MEDIA COMPANY BRISTOL LTD Managing director Marie Davies Promotions and partnerships manager Rosa Sherwood Publishing assistant Lara Von Weber Group managing director Andy Marshall CEO Tom Bureau…

The University of York’s Borthwick Institute is hoping to trace the relatives of the Second World War service personnel who left their names in a canteen visitors’ book (below). The book records visitors at the Wesley Methodist Chapel canteen on Priory Street, York, between 1941 and 1946. They wrote their names, addresses and regiments in the book, and in some cases left poems, comments and sketches. It has been transcribed and published online by volunteers. The archivists now want to hear from the families of those who signed the book, or worked in the canteen. You can view the book at borthcat.york. ac.uk/index.php/mr-y-wc-47 and search the names by clicking ‘Browse as list’. Contact the institute by emailing borthwick-institute@york.ac.uk, tweeting @UoYBorthwick or telephoning 01904 321166.…

The Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail reports a quick and unfortunate ending to the marriage of a couple from Shildon at the Roman Catholic Chapel in Bishop Auckland. When asked if he would take the bride to be his wife, the groom answered “Yes.” However, when the bride was asked if she would marry him, she said: “I will not.” According to the newspaper, “She refused to give any explanation, and with her bridesmaid walked out of the church.”…

BOOKS Ancestral Trails, 3rd Edition Mark D Herber Genealogical Publishing Co., 2009 This edition of the classic guide Ancestral Trails remains a valuable resource, but is showing its age. Family History – Digging Deeper Simon Fowler The History Press, 2012 Simon’s book includes a problem-solving section in which experts tackle common difficulties. Genealogy: Essential Research Methods Helen Osborn Robert Hale, 2012 The author uses examples from her own family history and her work with clients to illustrate how to solve research problems. Tracing Your Ancestors in The National Archives, 7th Edition Amanda Bevan A&C Black, 2006 Although also in need of an update, the seventh edition of this book is a good guide to the records at TNA. WEBSITES GENERAL GENEALOGICAL RESOURCES w familysearch.org w ukbmd.org.uk w www.genuki.org.uk Get free…

Y-DNA testing works best if your results can be analysed with other people in a project. FTDNA hosts more than 10,500 surname projects, as well as geographical and haplogroup projects. You can search for surname projects at familytreedna.com/projects.aspx . You can find a list of geographical projects at isogg.org/wiki/Geographical_DNA_projects, and a list of haplogroup projects at isogg.org/wiki/Y-DNA_haplogroup_projects. All of the projects are run by volunteers who have varying degrees of time, knowledge and enthusiasm. If you have an enthusiastic admin they can often help you to interpret your results, and provide advice on additional testing. Some projects also have associated Facebook groups or mailing lists where you can get to know your fellow project members and discuss your shared interests. Many of the leading surname projects are run by members…

The Big Y-700 is an advanced test from FTDNA that combines SNPs and STRs in a single test. There are about 56 million base pairs in the human Y-chromosome. The Big Y sequences roughly 23 million of these base pairs in the parts of the Y-chromosome that are known to be the most informative for building the Y-DNA haplotree. The Big Y not only reports known variants but is also a way of discovering new variants, some of which might be unique to an individual. A minimum of 700 STRs are reported, and these include the 111 markers that have been tested with the traditional tests. This will allow your results to be included in the existing FTDNA STR matching database. However, you will also benefit from being included in…

The patronymic system of naming was prevalent in some parts of Wales until well into the 19th century. A son’s forename was followed by ‘ab’ or ‘ap’, meaning ‘son of’, then the Christian name of their father. For example: Dafydd ap Gwilym ap Rhydderch ap Thomas would reveal a string of four generations with Dafydd the son of Gwilym, grandson of Rhydderch and great grandson of Thomas. A daughter’s first name would be followed by ‘ferch’ or ‘verch’ (sometimes abbreviated to ‘vch’ or ‘vz’), then followed by her father’s Christian name.…

What uniform is Frederick wearing in this photograph? Q Can you help me identify this uniform? I think the cap badge could be that of the Royal Artillery, but I’m not certain as it isn’t clear. The soldier is Frederick William Russell Hughes and he was born in August 1897 in West Derby, so he would have been 17 years old in 1914. He looks a bit older here, so I presume it could have been taken in the latter part of the First World War. I haven’t been able to find his military record, so I presume it is one of the ones that was destroyed in the Second World War. Keith Hughes A This is indeed a Royal Artillery (RA) driver. We get a lot of artillerymen enquiries,…

Proud soldier My grandmother’s brother Robert served with the Royal Army Medical Corps during the Second Boer War and the First World War. In later years he was a bus conductor in Gillingham, Kent. Sadly two of his sons died in tragic accidents, and a third died in the Second World War. Rich in experience My grandmother Ellen (right) had a long and eventful life. She lived in Malta until the First World War, was in service to Queen Alexandra, and helped disfigured RAF pilots convalesce. She passed away in Los Angeles, age 102. My grandmother’s cousin Clara Clara Hughes was recorded as deaf and “nearly blind” on census reports. She lived with siblings, and was employed by blind institutions. However, she spent her final years at a convalescent home…

Since specific servant-related records are few and far between, you need to turn to more general sources to find out about the working lives of ancestors in domestic service. My favourite website for this is the British Newspaper Archive (british newspaperarchive.co.uk ), where you can browse and search back issues of hundreds of local and national newspapers; Pro members of findmypast. co.uk can also access the same newspapers. One of the best things about the archive is that you can look for specific newspapers covering the area your forebear worked in, and the same period in time. It’s always worth searching for your ancestor’s name. If that fails, try inputting the search terms ‘servant’, ‘domestic servant’, ‘maid’, ‘domestic service’ or particular occupations within the industry, such as ‘cook’ or ‘laundry…

The Absent Voters Lists started to be compiled in 1918, to enable servicemen and women who were away from home to vote – either by proxy or by postal vote. As David Lloyd George, the prime minister at the time, said, “The man who has fought must have the right to determine how the fruits of his peril are going to be dealt with.” The 1918 Representation of the People Act allowed all men over the age of 21 to vote free of a property qualification. In addition, officers and other ranks who were 19 years old (the age a soldier was supposed to have reached to serve overseas) by 15 April 1918 had the franchise age lowered so that they could vote too. However, although many women over 30…

During just a few years in the mid-19th century the telegraph transformed communication, making it possible to send a written message hundreds of miles in minutes. Before long a network of undersea cables connected us to distant lands in a way that was previously unimaginable. The first British technology capable of sending electrical telegraphs was patented by Charles Wheatstone and William Fothergill Cooke in 1837. An operator sent electrical impulses down a wire, causing magnetic needles on the receiving mechanism to move and spell out the message on a dial. The Cooke and Wheatstone device was used for railway signalling, and a network of telegraph wires grew with the expansion of the railways. Before long, the system began offering a messaging service to the public via offices at railway stations.…

A person’s last will and testament can reveal a lot about that individual – how much they were worth, where they lived, who was alive (and a beneficiary) after their death, and so on. Thanks to the Government’s probate website probatesearch.service.gov.uk, it’s now possible to not just see if any ancestors who died after 1858 left a will, but – if it exists – order a digital copy in PDF format for just £1.50. This step-by-step guide reveals how to use the website to find and order wills; we’ve included a step for users of ancestry.co.uk, who will find its searchable National Probate Calendar more useful than the one provided by GOV.UK. Before ordering, verify that the record you’re about to order says “will” and not “administration of the estate”.…

A brick wall is something that we all face in genealogy, and they are all the more frustrating if they relate to a beloved relative. This was the case for Susan Moseley, who began researching her tree in 1981, only to hit a brick wall with her paternal grandmother Elizabeth Rowley (née Watson). Susan knew that she had been born on 26 February 1885, and at the time was unable to search for a mother’s maiden name on official birth records before 1911. All this changed in 2017 thanks to the introduction of a new search function on the website of the General Register Office (GRO). MY BRICK WALL I began tracing my family tree in the early 1980s, and naturally one of the first relatives I researched was my…

Ernest Brake came from a working-class family in Bristol and was the third of 13 children. He worked as an engineer’s labourer until war broke out when, at the age of 19, he enlisted in the Army with his older brother Dennis. Ernest served as a gunner on the Western Front, and during his time as a soldier he wrote touching letters home enquiring about his siblings. As a gunner Ernest would have been exposed to deafening noise and the constant threat of enemy bombardment. Whether this became too much, nobody knows, but when Ernest was discharged he was suffering from shell shock, in addition to the effects of gas. He was initially sent to the Dorset County Asylum in Dorchester, then transferred to Bristol where he spent the rest…

Every few pages, or so it seems, in the Victorian popular history Old and New London , there’s a woodcut of a village green, a coaching inn, a rural tollgate, a crossroads or a church, all nestled within chapters bearing names of streets or areas: Tottenham Court Road, Chelsea, Eltham or Islington, for example. It makes you realise that the urban expanse we know today is a comparatively recent development. Rewind a couple of centuries, and much of what is now Greater London was a rural patchwork surrounding a walled medieval city (you can see all this for yourself via the digitised volumes at british-history.ac.uk/ search/series/old-new-london). Once you find a Londoner in your tree you need to pin down where they lived. In a city with so many inhabitants, knowing…

LISTEN YOU’RE DEAD TO ME BBC Sounds Free Historian Greg Jenner has spent years making history fun for children as a consultant to the BBC TV series Horrible Histories. Now he aims to do the same for adults, with a new podcast “for people who don’t like history”. In every episode Jenner and his guests, including other historians and comedians, take a lively look at a different topic – from Boudica to Blackbeard and the history of football. WATCH THE MISSING PIECE  bit.ly/myheritage-missing Free This powerful half-hour documentary from family history site myheritage.com follows Kim and Christine, two sisters who were born in Korea, abandoned as children and adopted in Belgium and the USA, and their emotional reunion thanks to DNA testing after 47 years apart. E-BOOK THE SECOND WORLD WAR:…

Use the GRO’s own birth index to search maiden names back to 1837 I know we’ve mentioned it before, but I still come across people who don’t realise that the birth index on the GRO’s website (https:// www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content /) lets you search using a mother’s maiden name (previously only births from 1911 onwards offered this). This was a huge help for Susan Moseley (page 68). It’s also good for checking if a couple had any children who aren’t on any of the censuses.…

COLQUHOUN IS SCOTTISH, NOT IRISH I’m just watching Kate Winslet’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, and one of her ancestors was a Colquhoun. The programme said that the name is Irish, but it’s actually Scottish (from Gaelic, hence the possible confusion). The name is from the west side of Loch Lomond. The clan were pro-government, and were massacred by the MacGregors at one point. So a British soldier would have been a natural career choice. The clan seat is Rossdhu House near Luss, now a well-known golf course. My grandparents were tenants of Sir Ivar Colquhoun and my mum was offered to get married from Rossdhu House, although she didn’t take up the offer. Moray Hamilton, by email EDITOR REPLIES: Thanks Moray. We passed on your comments…

23andMe introduces new features to its DNA tests 23andMe has added new features to its DNA tests, including several hundred new genetic populations in regions of South Asia, Western Asia and North Africa. The company has also launched a Family Tree feature, which auto-populates a customer’s connections to distant relatives in its database. Finally, all customers with the Ancestry kit will now receive more than 30 trait reports, giving a genetic likelihood of such factors as preferring sweet or salty foods. Cumberland parish records published online Family history website findmypast. co.uk has added a new collection of parish records from Cumberland. It contains 76,000 baptisms, 37,000 marriages and 61,000 burials, taken from transcribed records provided by the College of Arms. Cumberland is a historic county in north-west England that is…

An Edwardian amateur photographer has been identified thanks to local historians. In 2007 John Thomson, from Bath, rescued a collection of 300 glass-plate negatives at the secondhand bookshop where he worked. They included photographs of Victorian family and village life, and even travels to France. In 2018 Thomson began converting the images to positives and sharing them online using the Twitter account @FacesInTheLight. From a label on the box, Thomson traced the photographs to the village of Yapton in Sussex. Then, with the help of local historian Allen Misselbrook, he identified the original photographer as a local man called Sidney Fletcher. He has even met Fletcher’s great granddaughters. Thomson said that he was delighted: “We never thought we would find out who it was.”…

British History Online has added transcriptions of 572 petitions to local magistrates in Elizabethan and Stuart Worcestershire and Cheshire (british-history.ac.uk/search/ series/petitions). At the time, petitions were one of the few ways that ordinary people were able to make requests to the authorities, whether they were complaining about their neighbours or demanding social change. They were transcribed by ‘The Power of Petitioning in Seventeenth-Century England’, a two-year academic project (petitioning.history.ac.uk). Dr Brodie Waddell of Birkbeck, University of London, who is one of the historians leading the project, wrote in a blog post: “Although very few focus on the sort of conventional ‘political’ issues found in modern petitions, together they show a huge range of the grievances raised by ordinary people in a tumultuous historical period.” The academic project plans to transcribe…

What happens when (as is so often the case) we are incensed by the consequences of some action by the Government or our local council? We might rage and fulminate, email the local paper, fire off a tweet, kick the cat, or hurl a book at the TV. But few of us would immortalise our grievance in stone so that future generations would know how annoyed we were. Beginning in 1850, in response to the ongoing national scandal of deplorable public health, high mortality rates and grossly inadequate sanitation, Parliament passed a series of Acts that sought to regulate how and where burials could take place. Churchyards in London had become horribly overcrowded with burials, especially in densely populated poorer areas. Corpses could be shifted before they had properly decayed,…

It does no harm to discuss your brick wall with other people. They may well come up with a line of research or a question that you hadn’t thought of. Most family history societies and many libraries run sessions where you can chat to a genealogist. Look out for ‘Ask the Experts’ stands at family history fairs, or submit your brick wall to the Q&A section of Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine (see page 37). There is also a forum on the magazine’s website where friendly family historians offer advice (www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/forum).…

By studying SNPs in the Y-chromosomes of the present-day population it is possible to construct a Y-DNA tree of humanity. SNPs are used to identify the branches and sub-branches or ‘clades’ on this tree. Each branch is a ‘haplogroup’. The Y-DNA haplotree can ultimately be traced back to the common ancestor of all men alive today (‘Y-chromosomal Adam’). It is estimated that he lived about 250,000 years ago, probably in Africa. He is not the first man who ever lived; he is simply the man whose lineage is preserved in the Y-chromosomes of the present-day population. Haplogroups have distinct geographical distributions. For example, haplogroups A and B are mostly found in Africa, whereas haplogroup O is found in South-East and Eastern Asia. Ancient DNA testing is beginning to provide insight…

1 Use your kit number and password to log into your account on familytreedna.com. From your homepage you can access all of your DNA results, view your matches, see migration maps, print STR and SNP certificates, and manage your projects. 2 The matches page is the most crucial part of your results. If you’re lucky your matches will have given the name of their most distant known ancestor. A blue square indicates you can view a match’s tree. Click on the headings to sort your matches. 3 Click on ‘Haplotree & SNPs’ to call up the FTDNA Y-DNA haplotree and see where your results place you on the Y-DNA tree of humanity. If you have done advanced testing then you will be placed much lower down the tree. 4 Click…

FACEBOOK w facebook.com/groups/ UndoingOfPollyButton Stephen relied heavily on social media to connect with Polly Button’s descendants. GOOGLE BOOKS w books.google.co.uk Stephen found a copy of the map that was used at John Danks’ trial, and useful reports into life in Nuneaton. NUNEATON MEMORIES w facebook.com/groups/ NuneatonMemories This Facebook group offers a fascinating mix of members’ memories and photographs of the town in the 20th century.…

Can you tell me more about the stripe on this man’s trousers? Q We have this family photograph of an unknown gentleman, and I am interested to know about his trousers. Was the stripe down the side a fashion detail, connected to the military, or perhaps he’s a postal worker? One side of our family were drapers at a big department store in Leicestershire. Could the stripes be linked to that? Rosemary Whittemore A This is a standard card-mounted studio photograph taken by a photographer, whose details are printed on the back in an unusual handwritten style. It is a carte de visite portrait, the most popular Victorian photographic format. Early examples taken during the 1860s generally portrayed their subject as a full-length figure in a contrived drawing-room interior, a…

If the “Name of the father” column on a birth certificate is blank, or the child is referred to as a “bastard”, “natural” or “base born” on a baptism record, then they are illegitimate. Sometimes the father will be the man the mother later married, although this is hard to prove. In some cases, the child may be given a distinctive first or middle name hinting at the father’s identity: a lodger, employer or neighbour perhaps. Check the original baptism record; church officials may have noted the reputed father’s name in the margin. Bastardy examination records, usually held in the local record office (some are online), can reveal a father’s identity if he was forced by the parish to pay for the child’s upkeep. Finally, illegitimate children are sometimes provided…

ARLEY HALL ARCHIVES w arleyhallarchives.co.uk Explore digitised accounts of a late 18th-century Cheshire country house. CHATSWORTH w bit.ly/chatsworth-devonshire Find out more about the Devonshire Collection Archives at Chatsworth in Derbyshire. DOMESTIC SERVICE w bit.ly/arch-domestic This 1901 book by a US historian, available from the Internet Archive, has a chapter on Europe. ESTATE RECORDS w bit.ly/nrs-estate-records This National Records of Scotland guide covers records such as rent rolls and leases (tacks). FAMILY AND ESTATE COLLECTIONS w bit.ly/nottingham-uni-colls The page describes Nottingham University’s family and estate collections. LANDED ESTATES w bit.ly/tna-landed This guide from The National Archives explains the records generated by rich families – search for them via discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk. LIVES AND LIVELIHOODS IN CONISBROUGH MANOR w hrionline.ac.uk/conisbrough Search court rolls from one of Yorkshire’s most important royal manors. NATIONAL TRUST COLLECTIONS…

The lists usually follow a similar format; this example is from the North Division of the Parliamentary Borough of Leeds. The original record is held by the British Library, and is available digitally on findmypast.co.uk 1 SOLDIER’S NAME This is probably the name that he enlisted under, and the name you will see on other records. 2 HOUSE NUMBERS These illustrate how many men from a small area were serving. It’s worth checking the 1911 census for these addresses. 3 ROAD NAME These are alphabetical. Of course, streets with similar names might not be near each other! 4 ARMY NUMBER Although First World War Army numbers weren’t unique, they’re the key to finding information in other records – but sometimes they were mistranscribed. 5 UNIT SERVED IN As you’d expect…

BOOK The Victorian Internet Tom Standage W&N, 1998 This book is a fascinating account of how the telegraph transformed the Victorian world. MUSEUM THE POSTAL MUSEUM a 15–20 Phoenix Place, London WC1X 0DA t 0300 030 0700 w postalmuseum.org The museum’s archive includes the records of GPO employees. WEBSITES BT DIGITAL ARCHIVES w digitalarchives.bt.com/ calmview Search thousands of books, documents, images and films. DISTANT WRITING w distantwriting.co.uk This site has a detailed history of the development of telegraphy.…

One 18th-century parish clerk made an admission that could easily strike gloom into the heart of a 21st-century genealogist: “Several couple ’as been married at our church during that clerk’s time which was not entered in the Redgester, owing to his negligence, he being a very Drinking Man.” Given that marriage records are a basic resource, how likely is it that our ancestors’ marriages were recorded? Where might we find such records? And if a direct record has not survived, where might we look for alternative evidence of a marriage? ‘While many marriage registers are online, digitisation is not complete’ Fortunately, marriages in England and Wales have generally been formal, public events. From the early 16th century through to the early 19th the vast majority of marriages were of necessity…

ANCESTRY w ancestry.co.uk/search/categories/epr The website’s collection of UK parish records includes images to many original marriage registers, so you can see your ancestors’ signatures (or marks, if they were illiterate). BRITISH NEWSPAPER ARCHIVE w britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk This subscription website has searchable images of pages from local and national newspapers. It can be accessed for free from some county record offices and libraries. OLD BAILEY ONLINE w oldbaileyonline.org This is a searchable database covering the period 1674–1913, with links to transcripts of trials as well as original images. It includes great detail about bigamous marriages!…

ARCHIVES THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES a Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9 4DU t 020 8876 3444 w nationalarchives.gov.uk TNA’s vast collection of material includes medical records. BOOKS The Regeneration Trilogy Pat Barker Penguin, 2014 These novels explore the story of officers who were treated at Craiglockhart War Hospital. Shell Shock in France 1914–18 Charles S Myers Cambridge University Press, 2012 Myers’ account of his work was first published in 1940. EXHIBITION WAR POETS COLLECTION a Edinburgh Napier University, 219 Colinton Road, Edinburgh EH14 1DJ t 0131 455 4616 w bit.ly/war-poets-edin This permanent exhibition is at Craiglockhart Campus, formerly Craiglockhart War Hospital. WEBSITES BRITISH PATHÉ w bit.ly/pathe-shock See footage of WW1 shell shock victims at Seale Hayne Military Hospital, Devon, although some have questioned its authenticity. SHELL SHOCK DURING WORLD WAR ONE w…

1559 The first known map of London, the Copperplate Map, is created. Three of its 15 sections survive today. 1571 What will become known as the London Stock Exchange is opened, as the Royal Exchange, by Elizabeth I. 1666 The Great Fire of London devastates the city in early September. It is generally thought to have started on Pudding Lane. 1814 The final River Thames Frost Fair, lasting four days, is held in February, with skating, dancing and bowling taking place. 1835 Marie Tussaud creates a permanent exhibition of wax sculptures on the upper floor of the ‘Baker Street Bazaar’. 1851 About 5,000 navvies work to erect the 1,851 foot-long Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, ahead of the Great Exhibition. 1863 The first section of underground railway opens between Paddington…

EAST OF LONDON FHS w eolfhs.org.uk This society covers Greater London “north of the Thames and east of the old City gates of Aldgate and Bishopsgate”. EAST SURREY FHS w eastsurreyfhs.org.uk Try this for Croydon, Kingston, Lambeth, Merton, Richmond, Southwark, Sutton or Wandsworth. LONDON WESTMINSTER & MIDDLESEX FHS w lwmfhs.org.uk This FHS handles the Cities of London and Westminster, and boroughs in the north of the modern capital. NORTH WEST KENT FHS w nwkfhs.org.uk Try this FHS if your ancestors lived in the old Kent parishes that are now part of South-East London. WALTHAM FOREST FHS w wffhs.org.uk The society focuses on south-west Essex (now partly East London), and holds its main meetings in Walthamstow. WEST MIDDLESEX FHS w west-middlesex-fhs.org.uk The area covered by West Middlesex includes parts of modern-day…

What is your book about? The book is an illustrated history of funeral customs and traditions starting with the Norman Conquest and going right up to the present day, and even thinking about what these customs might look like in the future. It’s a real sweep through history telling the story of how different people have met that ultimate existential challenge in their own way according to the context of the time, and particularly how they’ve created, navigated and negotiated their relationships with the dead. What were you most surprised to discover? What really interested me was just how old some of these customs and beliefs are. One example is the belief that owls crying is a portent of death. That one’s attested in I think the 1250s and it’s…

GARY LINEKER: MY GRANDAD’S UNTOLD WAR November BBC One In the year of the 75th anniversary of D-Day, those who landed at Normandy have rightly been honoured for their courage. And yet, as a new documentary presented by former Who Do You Think You Are? subject Gary Lineker reminds us, this was a war fought on multiple fronts. The programme also highlights that, no matter the era, many veterans return from the front reluctant to share their experiences with their families. One such soul was Gary’s grandfather Stanley Abbs, who served with the Royal Army Medical Corps. Rather than landing in France, he was sent to Italy. Although Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime was toppled as early as September 1943, the northern half of the country was occupied by the Nazis…

WW1 SERVICE RECORD Arthur was a music-hall artiste by profession, but joined the Army in the First World War. Unfortunately most Army service records from the period are lost, but Arthur’s survive. We found his enlistment form in the collection ‘British Army WWI Service Records, 1914–1920’ on ancestry.co.uk at bit.ly/anc-shaw . BMD INDEXES We also looked for the births of the children of Arthur and Dolly. We located the birth index of their son, James Ira Shaw, on the website FreeBMD: freebmd.org. uk/cgi/search.pl. This provided the index reference to order the original certificate from the General Register Office’s website (https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/). 1939 REGISTER We traced Dolly’s life forward by finding her on the 1939 Register. The register was taken at the outbreak of the Second World War, and contains details of…

ADVERTISING t 0117 300 8803 e andy.williams@immediate.co.uk EDITORIAL t 0117 300 8621 e wdytyaeditorial@immediate.co.uk Q&A QUERIES e wdytyaquestions@immediate.co.uk SUBSCRIPTIONS t 03330 162120* e wdytya@buysubscriptions.com WDYTYA ? APP SUPPORT e wdytyadigital@buysubscriptions.com WEBSITE QUERIES e wdytyaeditorial@immediate.co.uk *UK calls will cost the same as other standard fixed-line numbers (starting 01 or 02) and are included as part of any inclusive or free minutes allowances (if offered by your phone tariff). Outside of free call packages call charges from mobile phones will cost between 3p and 55p per minute. Lines are open Monday to Friday 8am–6pm and Saturday 9am–1pm. Overseas subscribers call +44 1604 973728.…

Two major free UK family history websites celebrated their 20th anniversary in September – and revealed their plans for the future. Charitable incorporated organisation Free UK Genealogy marked the anniversary of FreeCEN (freecen.org.uk) and FreeREG (freereg.org.uk) with a conference at King’s Manor at the University of York on 28 September. The websites provide free, searchable transcripts of key family history records. FreeREG covers Church of England and nonconformist parish registers, with over 46 million records in total. FreeCEN holds over 37 million UK census records, with just over half of total records in the 1841–1891 censuses available. The conference follows last year’s anniversary celebrations for Free UK Genealogy’s original website FreeBMD (freebmd.org.uk), which covers civil registration records. Together, the three websites constitute one of the few online resources for key…

LONDON FAMILY HISTORY DAY WITH THE MIGRATION MUSEUM 2 November a The Migration Museum at The Workshop, Lambeth e info@migrationmuseum.org w bit.ly/fhd-migration Learn more about growing your family tree with experts from TNA, the London Metropolitan Archives, the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain and the Black Cultural Archives. £5. HOW TO BE CONFIDENT IN YOUR FAMILY TREE 9 November a Society of Genealogists, Clerkenwell t 020 7553 3290 w bit.ly/sog-confident Karen Cummings reveals how to research your ancestry the way the professionals do. £20. MIDLANDS BEHIND THE BARBED WIRE 23 October a Sutton Bonington Campus, University of Nottingham t 01332 345224 w bit.ly/behind-barbed-wire This one-day symposium presents research findings inspired by negatives and prints of German POWs at Donington Hall and Kegworth camps in the First World War. Free.…

We have all been there. Happily pursuing somebody on the family tree, when the trail goes dry. A great granny just disappears into thin air. Or a great great grandfather just appears from nowhere, almost as if he had been dropped by a UFO. So, what to do? START AGAIN Yes, I know you have the intimate lives of all your forebears off-by-heart. People avoid you at parties because of this. But trust me here. If your ancestor has gone missing, the first thing to do is to double-check your notes just in case a mistake has been made. Are the dates of birth or baptism, wedding and death correct? Were they christened or married where you thought they were? Are their names correct? It’s dull work and potentially embarrassing,…

This advice may seem obvious – you’ve hit a brick wall, because your 3x great grandmother Phyllis isn’t living where she’s supposed to be. But often the real question is not so obvious. For example, a client once asked me a question about Ireland, and my heart sank because so many Irish records were lost in the fire of 1922. However, after a bit more discussion it turned out that the question was really about a British soldier who just happened to be located in Dublin. The client hadn’t really thought through what she was trying to find out.…

BOOKS The Family Tree Guide to DNA Testing and Genetic Genealogy Blaine T Bettinger Family Tree Books, 2019 The second edition of Bettinger’s book is a good general introduction. Tracing Your Ancestors Using DNA: A Guide for Family Historians Edited by Graham S Holton Pen and Sword, 2019 This guide includes a detailed chapter on Y-DNA, and a separate chapter on projects. WEBSITES GUILD OF ONE-NAME STUDIES w one-name.org The guild has a useful Y-DNA section on its website. Guild members also have access to additional DNA articles as well as DNA-related material in the guild’s journal and wiki. The guild holds DNA seminars for project administrators every couple of years, and an archive of seminar material is available to members. ISOGG WIKI w isogg.org/wiki The International Society of Genetic…

Why can’t I trace my husband’s great grandmother back further? ‘The father’s details on Sophia’s marriage record may be incorrect’ Q My husband’s great grandmother was Sophia McClamance born in about 1850 in Glasgow, Lanarkshire. I would like to know exactly when and where Sophia was born, about her life before marrying Reuben Brackenbury on 14 January 1872 in Sheffield and also her birth family, so I can grow that branch of my tree. Her marriage certificate names Sophia’s father as Samuel McClamance, a carpenter. The couple had six children. Reuben died in April 1891 and Sophia in December 1918. I hope you can help. Christine Brackenbury A There is no surname ‘McClamance’ recorded in George Black’s The Surnames of Scotland, and the name is not in any database on…

Great grandmother picture bit.ly/will-ggm Here (pictured right) is a photo I found of my great grandmother Elsie May Johnson (1902–1965). She was born in South Hinksey in Berkshire and moved to Cowley, Oxfordshire, when she was young. I was wondering if anybody could help say when this photograph may have been taken? It was from an album with no information on the back. Will Mundy Help with birth registrations bit.ly/father-excluded I have knowledge of a series of births in the 1940s where the father is not included on the birth registrations even though the mother was married to the same person all the time and they were all given his surname. The father was in the Army at the time, so could this be why he was not included? Would…

November is the time to remember the end of the First World War – and the approximately 886,000 British military personnel killed in the conflict. Among its collections, East Riding Archives has a uniquely personal memento of one of these men, Lieutenant Edward Moore Robson – a set of cartoons he drew on the Western Front. As archivist Samuel Bartle explains, they shed new light on the experiences of soldiers in the trenches. WHO WAS LIEUTENANT EDWARD MOORE ROBSON? Edward Moore Robson was born in Pocklington, East Yorkshire, in 1890. During his service in the First World War he was awarded the Military Cross for bravery at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. He served with the 5th Battalion of Alexandra, Princess of Wales’ Own (Yorkshire Regiment), also known…

BOOK The Great War Medal Collectors Companion, Volumes One and Two Howard Williamson Anne Williamson, 2011; Collectors Guide Publications, 2014 These two volumes provide many details on interpreting Medal Index Cards and deriving information from soldiers’ Army numbers. MUSEUMS THE ARMY MUSEUMS OGILBY TRUST a 58 The Close, Salisbury, Wiltshire SP1 2EX t 01722 332188 w https://www.army museums.org.uk You can find details of regimental museums on the trust’s website. WEBSITES THE LONG, LONG TRAIL w longlongtrail.co.uk This site provides a wealth of information about the First World War, how to understand service records, where units served, and the creation and use of the Absent Voters Lists themselves. THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES w nationalarchives.gov.uk TNA’s website features an easily searchable database of Medal Index Cards at bit.ly/medalcards, which should confirm if your…

The Postal Museum in London (postal museum.org ) holds records for all GPO staff, including telegraph operators employed from 1870. You can search for these in person at the museum, or through its paid-for research service. You will find records of appointments, pensions and gratuities, including those paid to female employees leaving to get married. Pension and gratuity records are usually accompanied by brief career details and notable achievements. Appointment records listing where and when an operator was employed are digitised on ancestry.co.uk. Your ancestor may also be mentioned in the Post Office’s Blackfriars Magazine (1850–1890) and its successors: Martins-le-Grand, the Post Office Magazine (1890–1933) and The Post Office Magazine (1933–1966). Digitised copies are available at the Postal Museum. The BT archive has a list of all GPO employees who…

Born Philip Yorke in 1690, Lord Hardwicke trained as a lawyer and rose to become solicitor-general, lord chief justice and lord chancellor. As a judge, he heard cases that illustrated the problems with the existing law of marriage. In one, a young man from a wealthy family was taken to an alehouse, made drunk, and married to a woman “in mean circumstances and of bad character”. However, nothing could be done to set aside the couple’s unfortunate but legally valid union. By the 1740s roughly half of all marriages in London were ‘clandestine’. The problem was that the only thing necessary for a valid marriage was an Anglican clergyman: once a couple had exchanged vows before one of these, they were legally wed. It was not essential to marry in…

BOOKS Birth, Marriage and Death Records: A Guide for Family Historians David Annal and Audrey Collins Pen & Sword, 2012 This is an excellent guide to the sources, by experienced family historians. Marriage Law for Genealogists, 2nd Edition Rebecca Probert Takeaway, 2016 Rebecca’s book explains how, when, where and why our ancestors married. WEBSITES FAMILY HISTORY FEDERATION w familyhistoryfederation. com The website of the organisation formerly known as the Federation of Family History Societies includes descriptions and contact information for societies around the country and overseas, complete with a useful map view. FAMILYSEARCH w familysearch.org This free website contains extracts from millions of parish registers. FREEBMD w freebmd.org.uk This transcription of the civil registration index is a good place to start looking for marriages that took place after 1 July…

1832 PARLIAMENT REFORMED On 7 June the Great Reform Act became law, ending over a year of turmoil featuring uprisings in Bristol, Derby, Dorset, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Somerset and Worcester. The Act was aimed at making the electoral system fairer, because there were numerous abuses in an absurdly unrepresentative system. The most commonly cited were those of the ‘rotten borough’ Old Sarum, the uninhabited site of an Iron Age fort, which had two Members of Parliament while the 30,000-strong industrial powerhouse Manchester had none. In parliamentary terms the old order was represented by the Tory prime minster Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington. He declared the country’s “full confidence” in the old system, shortly before the House of Commons ousted him in favour of the Whig leader Charles Grey, the…

OLD AND NEW LONDON w british-history.ac.uk/search/series/ old-new-london Explore this popular illustrated history which was first published in the 1870s. LONDON LIVES w londonlives.org Learn more about 18th-century London with data drawn from the City of London sessions, plus City coroners’ records, some parish archives, and Carpenters’ Company and St Thomas’ Hospital records. COLLAGE: THE LONDON PICTURE ARCHIVE  w collage.cityof london.gov.uk Search more than 250,000 images taken from the collections of the Guildhall Art Gallery and the London Metropolitan Archives. LONDON’S SCREEN ARCHIVES w londonsscreen archives.org.uk Browse fascinating film clips drawn from borough collections across the metropolis. LONDON’S PULSE w wellcomelibrary.org/moh Part of the Wellcome Library’s Digital Collections, here you can explore reports from the medical officer of health between 1848 and 1972, including birth and death rates. OLD BAILEY ONLINE…

Maria Watson’s life began in the workhouse, and she was forced to return there many times in order to survive. Her story reads like a Dickensian tragedy, set in the Liverpool slums where poverty and high infant mortality devastated families. Somehow, Maria found the courage to live on and, in later life, free herself from the grim workhouse walls. ‘Maria entered the workhouse 157 times over the course of her life’ Her story resonates with experiences that many of our urban female ancestors would have shared. Her great great granddaughter is Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine reader Lorraine Tomlinson. “Maria was born in Liverpool’s Brownlow Hill Workhouse in 1853,” Lorraine explains. “I was shocked to discover that she was forced to enter the workhouse 157 times over the…