Anglo-Celtic Connections

Miscellaneous items I found interesting this week.

The UK Web Archive is to be restored towards the middle of 2026

Good and Bad News for LAC
On the bright side, the LAC Foundation announces a gift of $5 million by Diane Blake and Stephen Smith to support the digitization, access to and public engagement with Canada’s Second World War collections.

However, Leslie Weir, Library and Archivist of Canada, informs that the Documentary Heritage Communities Program (DHCP) has been permanently discontinued and that there will be reductions to the Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) functions. These measures are the result of federal budget cuts. On 5 February, the Association of Canadian Archivists sent a letter to Marc Miller, Minister responsible for LAC, asking him to “advocate for the restoration of dedicated federal support for community-based documentary heritage work.”

Perhaps through the donation ATIP will be relieved of the task of scrutinizing WW2 service file requests, at least where the person has been deceased for 20 years.

Destruction at the Gaza CWGC Cemetery
I received tips from two sources about this article in The Guardian. It quotes the IDF, “During IDF operations in the area, terrorists attempted to attack IDF troops and took cover in structures close to the cemetery. In response, to ensure the safety of IDF troops operating on the ground, operational measures were taken in the area to neutralize identified threats.” However, given that many of the graves destroyed were Australian, I was impressed by the words of Australian military historian Peter Stanley, “The first need is to stop people in Gaza dying and to provide succour to those who have been starving and suffering for years now: this needs to be kept in proportion.

Cost of UK TV licence fee set for 2026/27
The annual cost of a UK TV licence will rise to £180 from 1 April 2026, in line with inflation.

It’s Amazing I’m Still Alive

How to write a death notice
Forwarded to me by a prominent BIFHSGO member. Timely?

This week, FMP adds over 1.1 million records from Essex and Suffolk, plus new newspaper pages.

Essex Marriages and Banns, 1537–1935
Over one million marriage and banns records from Essex, transcribed from records held by the Essex Record Office. Original record images are not linked. Each entry typically includes names, residences, occupations, marriage dates and places, fathers’ names, and witnesses.

Suffolk Hearth Tax Lists, 1662–1675
This new collection has more than 100,000 Hearth tax returns transcriptions, no images, from Restoration-era Suffolk, levied twice yearly based on the number of hearths in a property. These lists name taxpayers and those exempted due to poverty, recording the number of hearths, an indicator of wealth and property size.

Newspapers
FMP gets its newspapers from the sister site, the British Newspaper Archive. This week’s five new BNA titles are Wedding Bells (1893), Irish Railway Gazette (1844-1850), Hour Glass (1895-1909), Democrat (1890-1891), and Blackpool Magpie (1879). The largest addition is the Belfast Telegraph with 153,174 pages from 1986 to 1999.

My attention was grabbed by a hint from Fiona Brooker during the Legacy Family Tree Webinars presentation, Foundations in AI for Family History 4 of 5: Smart Tools—AI Helpers for Genealogy Tasks, on Wednesday evening.

Fiona mentioned getting 61 hits when searching at home for an ancestor on FamilySearch Full Text Search. The same search at a Family Search Affiliate Library yielded 91 hits.

I tried it myself at the Ottawa Stake Family History Centre, now officially termed a FamilySearch Centre.  Here are the hit counts for five people.

Person	Home	FHC
WHN	16	29
PM	482	544
JR	1,299	2,042
JDA	51	192
JM	1,165	1,494

The median is 57% more hits at the FHC.

When searching for a place name, the number of hits jumped from 10,133 to 29,409.

I didn’t have time to do more than sample the hits. One, revealed at the FHC and not found during a home search, was an extensive will left by a wealthy two-time widow who had no children of her own.

I’ll have to remember to try the same searches at an affiliate library. If you try it please pop your experience into the comments.

 

On 5 February 2026, Ancestry updated two Ontario civil registration databases.

Ontario, Canada, Deaths and Deaths Overseas, 1869-1953

• Now includes deaths through 1953
• Total records: 4,841,520
• The Archives of Ontario holds originals to 1954

Ontario, Canada Births, 1832-1919

• Now includes births through 1919
• Total records: 7,586,650
• The Archives of Ontario holds originals to 1919

Record counts include all indexed individuals, not just the principal (the deceased or the child born).

For further information, refer to the Archives of Ontario page Birth, marriage and death registrations, which was updated on 3 February 2026.

Pro Tip: If you don’t find the entry you’re looking for, check the Browse feature on Ancestry. It’s organized by County or District and Year. Perhaps the year is missing, or the entry isn’t under the name expected.

There’s a crazy new rule for dual UK citizens entering the UK after 25 February. You will either have to travel on a UK passport or have a special, and costly (£589) authorization called a Certificate of Entitlement in your other country passport. Either way, the cost is significantly higher than the ETA fee, which is available to those without British citizenship. Crazy. Here’s the low-down.

Paul Milner delivered an outstanding introductory webinar on Tuesday evening on English history and its impact on genealogical research. The session covered how historical events shaped record creation, key repositories, and access strategies.

Notable mention: The British Library’s new website launched mid-December, with their thesis collection expected to return soon.

The webinar is free for one week at https://familytreewebinars.com/.

Census Tree is the largest historical U.S. census database, containing over 700 million record links for individuals living in the United States between 1850 and 1940.

Researchers use it to study social mobility and family change across generations. The October 2025 ScienceDirect article Breakthroughs in historical record linking using genealogy data: The Census Tree project, documents applications, including comparisons of occupational mobility between children of immigrants and those with U.S.-born fathers.

The database has also exposed data quality issues—in one instance, census workers fabricated entire census pages.

For genealogists, a YouTube video explores Census Tree’s applications, though it’s technical and detailed. It’s unclear whether Ancestry and similar platforms already incorporate this technology into their hint algorithms.

No word yet on whether this technique will extend to Canadian or British census records.

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 https://conferencekeeper.org/virtual/

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Tuesday, 3 February

2:00 PM, Ottawa Virtual Genealogy Drop-In for OGS (Ottawa Branch)
https://ottawa.ogs.on.ca/

2:30 PM, The Commissioner and Mr. Coughlin: Two Immigrants, One Murder, and a Search for Origins, by Brendan Wolfe for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/15525705

7:30 PM, Scoundrel BINGO, by Janice Nickerson for OGS (Durham Branch)
https://timetraces.com/durhambranch/

8:00 PM, English Context – History, Sources and Repositories, by Paul Milner for Legacy Family Tree Webinars
https://familytreewebinars.com/

10:00 PM (7:00 PM PT),
Exploring Genetic Genealogy: Introductory DNA, by Debra Cole for the British Columbia Genealogical Society,
https://www.bcgs.ca/

Wednesday, 4 February

11:30 AM, Advanced Census Research: Understanding Census Enumerators and Their Instructions, by Annette Burke Lyttle for Legacy Family Tree Webinars
https://familytreewebinars.com/

12:45 PM, The Many Faces of the Census: Beyond the Population Schedule, by Cheri Hudson Passey for Legacy Family Tree Webinars, https://familytreewebinars.com/

2:00 PM, Case Studies in Census Conflicts – Resolving Contradictions Across Decades, by Cheri Hudson Passey for Legacy Family Tree Webinars, https://familytreewebinars.com/

3:30 PM, Context in the Count: Interpreting the U.S. Census, by Elizabeth Swanay O’Neal for Legacy Family Tree Webinars, https://familytreewebinars.com/

7:30 PM, AI in Genealogy, Is it really new? by Gordon McBean for OGS (Huron Branch)
https://ogs.on.ca/events/

8:00 PM, Foundations in AI for Family History: Smart Tools, by Andrew Redfern and Fiona Brooker for Legacy Family Tree Webinars, (Members’ exclusive)
https://familytreewebinars.com/

Thursday, 5 February

1:00 PM, Death Investigation: What Do Coroners Do? by Peter Thornton for Gresham College.
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/whats-on/death-coroners

7:00 PM, Investigative Genetic Genealogy: What Is It and How You Can Help by Marie Palmer for OGS
https://ogs.on.ca/

Friday, 6 February

2:00 PM, Essential Skills: Hail the Hunter Gatherer—Finding What You Already Have by Dave McDonald for Legacy Family Tree Webinars, https://familytreewebinars.com/

Saturday, 7 February

11:00 AM, The Terrible Silence – Maritime Disasters and Tragedy at Sea by Charlotte Ward-Kelly for International Society for British Genealogy and Family History (ISBGFH),
https://isbgfh.com/

 

Note: Don’t forget to mark your calendars for Saturday, 14 February. I will be presenting “Rain Soaked Roots” for BIFHSGO, exploring the fascinating ways weather impacted our ancestors’ lives and the records they left behind.

The Gemini Ai app from Google is gaining ground. While ChatGPT is still #1, I find myself using Gemini more and more. There’s a lot you can do with the free version. What’s not to like about that?

There’s a new YouTube video that explores Gemini in depth. It taught me a thing or two, notably about Canvas and Gems. Do pause the playback as you move through it to try features; otherwise, the accumulation of information gets overwhelming.

Don’t miss the section right at the end so you can benefit from the smartphone app.

Link to the video, How To Master Google Gemini in 2026 (Free Course), at https://youtu.be/-_FizlRlfYs?si=LFeAKAPkPL8AAe2k

Ancestry has just released four major collections from the East Riding of Yorkshire, with nearly 500 years of parish records and over 5 million new entries. Hull and Scarborough are the largest communities among the 150+ parishes included. They are complete with links to original record images.

• Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials (1538–1812): This unified collection for early research begins with the inception of parish registration under Henry VIII and continues through the introduction of standardized printed registers. It contains approximately 1.7 million records.

• Baptisms (1813–1925): Covering the industrial revolution and the Victorian era, this set of 1.6 million records is essential for identifying parents’ names and occupations during a period of significant migration.

• Marriages and Banns (1754–1950): With 1.2 million records, this collection includes the more detailed information required after Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act, often providing the names of fathers and witnesses in later years.

• Burials (1813–2000): This final set of 435,000 records helps close the loop on family stories, offering a path to locating final resting places well into the modern era.

Despite the fanfare, scientific analysis confirms that groundhogs are more celebrity than climatologist.

Studies, including a 2021 assessment by Lakehead University, show a consistent 50% groundhog accuracy rate. That’s like tossing a coin.

The NOAA Data: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that Punxsutawney Phil has been right only 40% of the time over the last decade.

Reliable vs. Unreliable Animal Signs
Our ancestors looked tothese signs to manage crops and travel. While some are grounded in biology, others are purely mythical.

High Reliability (Short-Term)
These behaviours are biological responses to immediate environmental changes:

Low-Flying Birds: They descend as barometric pressure drops; the thinner air makes high-altitude flight difficult before a storm.

Bees: Often return to the hive en masse just before rain due to sensitivity to static electricity and moisture.

Sharks: Move to deeper waters when they sense a drop in hydrostatic pressure, often predicting hurricanes.

Low Reliability (Long-Term)
These are popular myths with no statistical backing for seasonal forecasting:

Woolly Bear Caterpillars: The width of their bands reflects the previous season’s conditions and age, not the upcoming winter.

Cows Lying Down: Research shows cows lie down frequently to chew cud; there is no proven link to imminent rainfall.

Tune into my online-only BIFHSGO talk Rain-Soaked Roots: Weather Shaped the Lives of Our British Isles Ancestors / 10 a.m. EST on 14 February. Tune in at 9 am for Paul Cripwell on Exploring Pictures with AI: the Good and the Bad.

Find out more at https://www.bifhsgo.ca/events