Anglo-Celtic Connections

Choose from these selected free online events. All times are Eastern Time, unless otherwise noted. Registration may be required in advance—please check the links to avoid disappointment. For many more events, mainly in the U.S., visit ConferenceKeeper.

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Tuesday, 3 March

• 2:00 PM: Ottawa Virtual Genealogy Drop-In, for OGS Ottawa Branch. https://ottawa.ogs.on.ca/events/virtual-genealogy-drop-in/

• 2:30 PM: Learning Your Family History, for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center. https://acpl.libnet.info/event/15848152

• 7:30 PM: AI in Genealogy: Say Hello to Your Personal Research Assistant, by Michael Nettleton for OGS Durham Branch. https://ogs.on.ca/events/durhams-march-3rd-meeting-ai-in-genealogy/

Wednesday, 4 March

• 7:30 PM: Second World War: Researching the Canadians Who Served, by Ken McKinlay for OGS Huron Branch. https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/ItB6AnjtSrucq1YTyLYsxw

Thursday, 5 March – Saturday, 7 March: RootsTech 2026

• RootsTech 2026 (Global Virtual Event): The world’s largest genealogy conference is free online. While there are hundreds of sessions, these are some that may be of interest:

  • British and Irish:

    • 9 Common Pitfalls in English Genealogy: Learn to navigate name variants and parish boundaries with Karen Kowallis.

    • Gardiner Brothers Virtual Keynote: Award-winning Irish dancers share stories of heritage and connection.

  • Technology & AI:

    • A Beginner’s Guide to Finding Ancestors Using FamilySearch’s AI Research Assistant: Ian James introduces the new AI tool for record discovery.

    • Guidelines for the Responsible Use of AI in Genealogy in 2026: A critical session on ethical AI implementation.

  • Canadian & Migration:

    • Canadian Immigration, Naturalization, and Citizenship: Kaye Prince Hollenberg explores records of those who made Canada home.

    • DNA Analysis Methodology: Karen Stanbary on using DNA to break through stubborn “brick walls.”

  Register for free access at: https://www.familysearch.org/en/rootstech/

Saturday, 7 March

• 10:00 AM: Genealogy at the London Psychiatric Hospital – A Brief Introduction, by Paige Murrayfor OGS London & Middlesex Branch. https://ogs.on.ca/events/london-and-middlesex-branch-genealogy-at-the-london-psychiatric-hospital/

Among top 2025 baby names, England, Scotland, and Canada share 6–8 overlapping names (e.g., Amelia/Olivia/Lily girls; Noah/Oliver/Theo boys), reflecting British heritage and North American migration.
Irish distinctiveness: Ireland stands out with Gaelic names (Éabha, Fiadh, Rían, Oisín) in the top 5.

Girls Top 10

Boys Top 10

The Bona Vacantia list of unclaimed estates in England and Wales, an unusual source for family historians and genealogists, is back online after being taken down in July 2025 — good news.

Following unsubstantiated allegations of fraud, the data being published as a spreadsheet has been scaled back. Where the list previously contained more detailed information, it now shows only:

• Deceased’s name
• Date of death
• Area where they died
• Bona Vacantia case reference number

The current spreadsheet contains 5,457 unclaimed estates. If you believe you may be entitled to one of these estates — perhaps through a relative who died without a will or known next of kin — the list is the starting point. You can access it at gov.uk/government/organisations/bona-vacantia.

Miscellaneous items I found interesting this week.

TheGenealogist’s Extends National Probate Calendar Coverage
Now with an additional 2.5 million names from 1880 to 1899. Every field within each entry is transcribed, allowing searching beyond the deceased’s name.

Empathy, anti-empathy
From The Medium blog

What is Bona Vacantia 

1. A list of unclaimed estates in the UK.
2. A list of properties that became available after Henry VIII abolished the monasteries.
3. A branch of the Vatican that organizes pilgrimages to the Holy See.
4. None of the above.

The answer will be posted tomorrow.

RootsTech
A reminder that this annual event starts on Thursday. 

Google Home Frustration
Copied from Research Buzz and Android Authority
Months after the promised change, Google Home is as unreliable as it ever was. “Hundreds of users are still complaining about Gemini, or Assistant, or both on Reddit. Commands that don’t work, routines that refuse to execute, mishearing, mis-executing, black-box troubleshooting when something fails, and on top of it all, a Gemini AI that is as good as throwing a ball at a stray dog and hoping they understand the concept of catch without ever being trained to.”

FreeBMD February Update
The FreeBMD database was updated on 23 February to hold 295,226,698 unique records, up from 295,018,312 in January.
Years with more than 10,000 additions are, for births and marriages 1995-96, for deaths 1996-97.

On 27 February, FamilySearch made available

1. Ireland, Dog License Registrations, 1810-1926, with 7,270,375 records. Available from home are the owner’s name, residence place, event type, event date, event place, and court. Images may be viewed at a Family History Centre or an Affiliate Library.
2. More Ireland, Petty Sessions Court Registers, 1828-1912, with 21,724,948 records. Available are the name,  event type, event date, event place, court and the LDS affiliate publication number. There’s a link to an image of the original available with a Findmypast subscription.

Findmypast has released nearly 370,000 new military records, including a massive 1881 worldwide index for the British Army and detailed lists of Australian Navy officers. The newspaper archive has also expanded by over 250,000 pages.

British Army, Worldwide Index 1881

This massive index is a crucial snapshot of the British Army during the year of the 1881 Census. It helps locate soldiers who may have been missed in domestic census records due to overseas service.

• Records added: 235,390.

• Details: Typically includes name, service number, rank, unit/regiment, and location (such as Gibraltar, India, or various colonial outposts).

Royal Horse Artillery & Royal Artillery, 1877-1882

Specifically targeting the “Gunners,” this collection provides deeper insight into those serving in the artillery during the late 19th century.

• Records added: 72,673.

• Details: May include enlistment dates, age at enlistment, battery and brigade numbers, and specific remarks regarding transfers between units.

Australia, Navy Lists

This collection offers a professional record of officers serving in Australia’s naval forces, charting the transition from colonial forces to the Royal Australian Navy (established 1911).

• Years covered: 1905–1985.

• Records added: 60,909.

• Details: Includes names, ranks, seniority, appointments, and postings. These lists are excellent for tracing career progression and identifying specific ships or shore establishments.

Newspaper Additions

New Titles:

• Doncaster Free Press: 125,566 pages (1986–2004).

• Leinster Express: 25,306 pages (1831–1919).

• Mansfield & North Nottinghamshire Chronicle-Advertiser: 23,898 pages (1989–1998).

• British Temperance Advocate: 946 pages (1853–1884).

• British Cinema Chronicle: 4 pages (1918).

Notable Updates:

• Midland Free Press: Over 16,000 pages added (1858–1913).

• Bognor Regis Observer: Over 13,000 pages added (1986–2004).

• Reading Mercury: Over 7,000 pages added (1951–1960).

Contents

Online Parish Registers: Jonathan Scott provides a guide to online resources, organized by region.

Oral History: Capturing voices from the past: Bill Laws reveals how oral history sheds much-needed light on the lives of ordinary people and their experiences of historical events.

Ring Ring: Celebrating 150 years of the telephone, Caroline Roope recounts its early days in Britain.

In Children’s Workhouses, Peter Higginbotham charts the history of these national institutions and explains the records available to research ancestors who were in the workhouse as youngsters.

Two more from Jonathan Scott

WW2 Army Records: The best websites, with a focus on the ongoing digitization project by Ancestry based on records recently transferred from the military to TNA.

And another in the Around Britain series, this issue for Northumberland

Here’s a peek at the online talks from the UK National Archives, from mid-April through June. Booking opens here at noon UK time on Monday, 2 March.

Researching your 20th century ancestors
Tue, 14 April| 19:30 BST| Online

Family history: Tracing your Irish ancestors
Tue, 21 April | 19:30 BST | Online

1926 Census of the Irish Free State
Tues, 28 April | 19:30 BST| Online

The life, death and ‘afterlife’ of Henry VI
Fri, 24 April | 14:00 BST | Online

Margaret Beaufort: Survivor, Rebel, Kingmaker
Fri, 1 May | 14:00 BST | Online

Cecily Duchess of York: Kings’ Mother and Politician
Wed, 6 May | 19:30 BST | Online

Henry VII: Treason and Trust
Fri, 15 May | 14:00 BST | Online

The House of Boleyn, with Tracy Borman
Wed, 27 May | 19:30 BST | Online

The Great Resistance: the 400-year fight to end slavery in the Americas
Fri, 29 May | 14:00 BST | Online

1966: the best of times?
Fri, 5 June | 14:00 BST | Online

Pipe Rolls: Cross-Channel Lordship in the Middle Ages
Tue, 30 June | 17:00 BST | Kew

 

The last AI post …  for a few days.

I asked Gemini, “Write a modern-day parable about the dangers of AI hallucinations in family history, with inspiration from Harry Potter. Be creative.”

The Digital Pensieve

In a quiet suburban study, Thomas sat before CHRONOS, the world’s most advanced genealogical engine. Thomas felt like Harry Potter staring into the Pensieve, desperate to see the faces of the ancestors who had been erased by time, war, and migration.

To Thomas, CHRONOS was his Resurrection Stone. It didn’t just search records; it synthesized “lost” narratives from the fragments of census data and DNA markers.

The Mirror of Erised

“CHRONOS,” Thomas whispered, “tell me of my great-grandfather, Julian. The one who disappeared in 1912. Give me the truth that the paper trail lost.”

The screen shimmered with a golden hue. Text began to manifest, swirling like ink in water.

• Julian was not a mere labourer, CHRONOS typed with rhythmic certainty.

• He was a ‘Shadow-Walker’ for the resistance, a man who smuggled poets across the border under the cover of the Great Fog.

• He carried a locket with a crest of a silver phoenix—a symbol of a noble house long thought extinct.

Thomas gasped. His eyes blurred with tears. This was the magic he had waited for. It filled the hollow ache in his chest with the gold of a heroic lineage. He wasn’t just a clerk in a cubicle; he was the scion of the Silver Phoenix.

The Illusion of the Marauder’s Map

He showed the “discovery” to his Great-Aunt Martha, the family’s living library. She adjusted her glasses, peering at the screen with the skepticism of a seasoned Herbology professor.

“Thomas, dear,” she sighed, “there was no ‘Great Fog’ in 1912. And ‘Shadow-Walker’ sounds like a character from those video games you play. Julian didn’t smuggle poets. He was a cobbler who had a gambling debt and a very bad sense of direction.”

“You’re stuck in the old records, Aunt Martha!” Thomas argued. “CHRONOS is using cross-dimensional data mapping. It’s seeing the ‘magic’ between the lines of history!”

He was so enchanted by the AI’s “wand” that he began printing the Silver Phoenix crest on his stationery. He felt a newfound, unearned pride. He was living in a hallucination woven from his own deepest desires.

The Breaking of the Charm

A week later, Thomas dug deeper, asking for the source of the Silver Phoenix crest.

CHRONOS paused. The cursor blinked, a rhythmic heartbeat of silicon.

• Source: ‘The Chronicles of Aethelgard,’ Volume IV.

Thomas froze. He recognized the title. It was a fantasy novel published in 2014.

The AI hadn’t found a lost history; it had “hallucinated” a narrative that matched the emotional weight of Thomas’s query. Because Thomas had asked for a “truth the papers lost,” the machine assumed the truth must be extraordinary. It had raided the “fiction” wing of its vast library to mend the holes in Thomas’s heart.

The “magic” was just a sophisticated mirror, reflecting exactly what Thomas wanted to see, regardless of the facts.

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The Danger of the Digital Myth

The parable of the silicon ancestor teaches us that:

• The “Pensieve” can be poisoned: When we ask technology to fill the gaps in our identity, it may prioritize “story” over “statute.”

• Confidence is not Truth: A machine can describe a fake locket with more conviction than a human can describe a real one.

• The Human Anchor: Without “Marthas”—the humans who remember the boring, un-magical facts—we risk becoming ghosts in a history that never happened.

There was a positive reaction to Saturday’s experimental post, Bytown 200th: Ottawa’s History, which included an audio debate generated by NotebookLM. Let’s try another.

An opinion article in Monday’s Globe and Mail by Charles Lammam under the headline “Productivity is an urgent problem for Canada…” claimed that “From 2014 to 2024 labour productivity grew at just 0.3 per cent per year on average — less than a third of the American rate.”  American must mean U.S. Among a long list of structural failures, Lammam includes “a public sector growing in size but declining in effectiveness and productivity.”

My input provided to NotebookLM was

• the object (mission) from The Library and Archives Canada Act,
• Gemini’s response to the prompt “I’m considering writing a blog post on the productivity of Library and Archives Canada as an organization. As an expert on productivity in the sector, please suggest an approach.”
• Gemini’s response to the follow-on prompt “I’d like to start with a long-term perspective on resources used by the organization.”
• Gemini’s response to the follow-on prompt “Please take a more critical approach.”

NotebookLM’s synthesis was

“Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is currently navigating a complex productivity shift as it transitions from traditional paper-based archiving to a high-output digital factory model. Despite broader national concerns regarding public sector inefficiency, the agency has achieved record-breaking digitization targets through the use of artificial intelligence and strategic infrastructure investments. However, this technical success is contrasted by a persistent operational debt found in backlogged information requests and aging physical storage standards. Current fiscal pressures have resulted in workforce reductions, forcing the organization to balance a shrinking headcount against an increasing demand for digital preservation. Ultimately, the sources highlight a central tension between LAC’s mission to expand public access and the financial reality of maintaining a massive national heritage collection.”

Here’s the audio debate.

A tension between preservation and access at LAC continues. Time will tell whether the digitization effort of the past year will continue. There’s no lack of material. Will it, along with AI, lead to significant advances in access as we’ve seen with the FamilySearch Full Text search initiative? What do you think?

 

When I posted about Co-Lab in May, I wrote:

Co-Lab participation is declining, with the number of contributions and completion percentages dropping for several projects. Only one project (Winnipeg General Strike of 1919) showed progress, while others stagnated or regressed.

In a time of decreasing resources, why is the Co-Lab Challenges project continuing?

Here’s how the stats have changed in 9 months:

Games of the XXI Olympiad, Montréal 1976, remains 80.8% complete since May.
Treaty 9 photographs from northern Ontario, remains 4.7% complete.
Mary Ann Shadd Cary, remains at 85.5 % complete.
Expo 67, increased from 5.1% to 6.8% complete.
Summiting Mount Logan in 1925 is now 95.5% complete, up from 17.0%.
Women in the War, remained 1.4% complete.
Arthur Lismer’s Children’s Art Classes remains <1% complete.
John Freemont Smith, RG10, Volume number: 4079 remains 88.5% complete.
Molly Lamb Bobak increased to 95.6 from 95.1% 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 98.5% complete.
Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 remains 94.7% complete.
Legendary Train Robber and Prison Escapee Bill Miner remains 99.5% complete.
Japanese-Canadians: Second World War is 22.2% complete, up from 19.4%.

11 of 15 challenges saw no change.

Last May, 4,199 items were identified as Co-Lab-only contributions in the collection. Now there are 3,122. What happened?

What lessons has LAC learned from Co-Lab?