Anglo-Celtic Connections

Miscellaneous items I found interesting this week.

Video – Bohemian Catsody

Tracing Your Irish Ancestors, an introduction by Claire Bradley for the Family History Federation.

British Library Annual Report
The 2025-26 report shows the library secured essential core government funding, made major progress rebuilding its computers and networks, and kept its public exhibits and services running; however, it faces severe multi-year budget deficits, a shrinking rainy-day emergency fund, and heavy costs and setbacks from a major 2023 cyber-attack.

Suffolk Archives New Website
When a new website is activated at the end of August reader’s accounts will not be replicated on the new system. Please ensure that you copy the details of any items on your wishlist onto your PC or device to save separately. If you have previously purchased downloads ensure that you have saved them onto your PC. If you have any problems with the downloads please email archives@suffolk.gov.uk for help.

Bookbub
“Amazing deals on bestselling ebooks.”

Thanks to the following individuals for their comments and tips: Anonymous, Craig Milne, Gail, Helen, Sue Lambeth, Sylvia Smith, Teresa, and Unknown.

 

There are over 5.6 million new records in the UK and Ireland Find a Grave Index collection, recently updated on Ancestry.

Title	Aug-26	Dec-25	Increase	Increase %
U.S.	187,073,146	184,339,956	2,733,190	1.5
UK and Ireland	29,447,349	23,818,332	5,629,017	23.6
Global	24,536,564	22,691,823	1,844,741	8.1
Australia and New Zealand	12,770,201	12,526,572	243,629	1.9
Canada	12,741,202	11,905,737	835,465	7.0
Germany	4,732,669	4,491,626	241,043	5.4
Sweden	1,177,327	1,165,869	11,458	1.0
Italy	504,897	448,850	56,047	12.5
Brazil	321,070	210,032	111,038	52.9
Norway	275,485	248,083	27,402	11.0
Mexico	100,083	93,256	6,827	7.3

 

Ancestry’s collection Cheshire, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812 saw the addition of 16,436 records since the previous update two years ago.  Other Cheshire Church of England collections were cleaned up, reducing duplication. Original record images are linked throughout these collections.

Many record collections are too small and niche to attract the interest of the large genealogy companies, but none-the-less valuable. Often you’ll find them in the UK at local archives, county record offices and museums. It’s good practice to check those where you have ancestry periodically.

A recent example, documented in an 18 August blog post, is from the Essex Record Office. The Borough of Saffron Walden records contain insight into allotments in the 1830s and 1840s.  Surviving records include committee minutes (D/B 2/PAR9/5 and D/B 2/PAR9/6), allotment rent accounts which record the names of people cultivating plots (D/B 2/BRL5/71), and maps of the fields with allotment plots marked out and numbered so they can be linked to the rent accounts, allowing individual plot holders to be identified (D/B 2/BRL5/72). The minutes also contain maps of the allotments and have been digitised so can be viewed on Essex Archives Online.

MyHeritage has launched Y-DNA results that help users explore their direct paternal line based, in most cases, on existing MyHeritage DNA data, with no new test required.

Read the MyHeritage blog post here.

This service is the result of a partnership with Family Tree DNA. MyHeritage is rebranding FTDNA’s products and FTDNA now releys on some MyHeritage products.

Interestingly, both companies had changes in ownership in early 2021.

The FamilyTreeDNA brand is owned by myDNA, an Australia-based genetic testing company which merged with Gene By Gene, the parent company of FamilyTreeDNA, in January 2021.

As of February 2021 MyHeritage is owned by Francisco Partners, a San Francisco-based global private equity firm.  The company continues to operate with Gilad Japhet retaining his role as the Founder and CEO.

Will the partnership develop further?

• Consultation on Service
  LAC maintains communication with clients through various consultation and mechanisms to better understand its client base and their needs.
  – Services Consultation Committee has been inactive since 2024 and has not met recently.
  – 2025 Service Improvement Survey results were posted on 23 February 2026 linking to an extensive contractor report. The vast majority of clients expressed satisfaction with the quality of the interactions they have had in person with LAC staff. Opinions on online services were positive but less favourable. Two-thirds of current LAC clients pointed to genealogy and family history (67%) and Canada history and land (65%) as areas where LAC’s collections are of interest to them. Kudos to LAC for funding the survey.
  – Youth Advisory Council is documented in a webpage dated 12 December 2025. 10 people. age 16 – 25, served for 2025-26. The Council met four times, January — April 2026 with meeting summaries posted. While there’s good evidence of there being a genuine consultation opportunity, there’s only suggestive, not confirmed, evidence of lasting impact.
  – Stakeholders Forum comprises 15 professional organizations that meet twice a year. The last reported meeting was Fall 2025. It featured presentations sharing highlights of activities currently underway within three organizations. While the Canadian Historical Association is a member, there is no representation from any genealogical or family history group, even though they represent two-thirds of LAC’s clients.

 

• Newspapers
  Two decades ago LAC made a decision to reduce the resources it dedicated to newspapers.  Staff were let go. Today, on LAC’s Research Guides and Tools for Finding Newspapers, it states “Most of our newspapers are not digitized, so you will need to view them in person.” An exception is “Four Indigenous newspapers (that) have been digitized as part of LAC’s National Heritage Digitization Strategy.” That was achieived through earmarked external funding.
  Much of LAC’s legacy newspaper collection is on microfilm, available at the Ottawa location. A substantial part of that is open self-service access, although that will likely change with the move to Adisoke.  Unlike other countries newspaper initiatives, LAC remains in the microfilm age.

 

• Quarterly statistics on access to information and privacy
  Posted on 11 August is an overview of LAC’s ATIP workload from April 1st to June 30th, 2026 .The total number of carried over requested increased from 5,965 to 6,106, or 2.6%.

Military requests outstanding decreased by 8.5% in the three months. Government records requests outstanding increased by 12.7%.

Processing capacity for military and public servant files has scaled up dramatically over the year, meaning those seeking essential service records are experiencing better turnaround times.

General government archival requests receive a much smaller share of attention, creating frustrating bottlenecks for deep historical and lineage research.

Thousands of requests are still carried over from quarter to quarter, with some multi-year delays, guaranteeing that anyone investigating restricted historical collections will continue to face major obstacles accessing primary sources.

 

Before reading this, make your own assessment (guess).

20,30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 100+?

 

I asked three AI services.

All referenced the woman most commonly credited with the highest number of children, Valentina Vassilyeva, the first wife of Feodor Vassilyev of Shuya, Russia. According to an 18th-century account, she supposedly had 69 children:

16 pairs of twins = 32
7 sets of triplets = 21
4 sets of quadruplets = 16
Total: 69 children
Across 27 pregnancies

Gemini (3.7 Flash)

• Biological & Theoretical Limits (Single Pregnancies)

• Fertile Window: Assuming an active reproductive lifespan of roughly 30 to 35 years (e.g., ages 15 to 45 or 50).

• Gestation & Recovery: A full-term pregnancy lasts approximately 40 weeks (9 months), followed by postpartum recovery and the return of ovulation.

• Maximum Singletons: If a woman becomes pregnant immediately after each birth with virtually no interval, the mathematical ceiling for single-child births is roughly 30 to 40 children over a lifetime. In practice, maternal depletion, physiological strain, and declining fertility after age 35 make reaching this number exceedingly rare.

Theoretical Maximum (Multiple Births & Technology)

• Natural Multiples: A woman with a strong genetic predisposition to hyperovulation (releasing multiple eggs per cycle) who consistently carries twins, triplets, or quadruplets to viability can theoretically reach 60 to 75+ children, matching or slightly exceeding the historical record.

• Genetic vs. Gestational Capacity: A woman’s ovaries contain roughly 300,000 to 400,000 eggs at puberty. With modern assisted reproductive technology (IVF, egg harvesting, and gestational surrogacy), a woman could theoretically have hundreds of genetic offspring, but her gestational capacity remains capped by time and human biology.

ChatGPT

What is biologically possible?

A woman who began having children very young and remained fertile into her late 40s could theoretically have 40 or more pregnancies, especially if pregnancies occurred almost continuously and some were twins or triplets.

For example, with:

• first pregnancy at 15
• last pregnancy at 50
• roughly one pregnancy every 10–12 months
• mostly single births

she might have 35–40 children.

But multiple births change the calculation dramatically. A woman having twins, triplets or quadruplets could theoretically exceed 50 children without an extraordinarily large number of pregnancies.

Claude (Sonnet 5, medium)

Biological upper limit

If you’re asking about a realistic ceiling based on biology rather than a historical record:

• A woman is fertile for roughly 30+ years (teens to mid-40s, sometimes later).
• Pregnancy plus recovery takes about a year per single birth if she wanted to maximize output, so in theory ~30–35 singleton pregnancies could fit into a fertile lifespan.
• Multiples (twins, triplets, etc.) push the number of children higher without needing more pregnancies — this is exactly what happened in the Vassilyev case.
• With extreme multiples (like the higher-order pregnancies enabled by fertility treatments, e.g. octuplets), a single pregnancy could theoretically add 6–8+ children, though survival rates drop sharply with very high-order multiples.

So in practice, the highest confirmed number is that ~69 figure, while a rough theoretical ceiling combining maximum pregnancies and multiples could run higher — but survivability and medical risk make astronomical numbers essentially impossible in real life.

This year’s British Isles Family History Society (BIFHSGO) conference dives deep into the forces behind Scottish migration and emigration, offering expert speakers with invaluable insights and practical strategies to help trace family lines back to a Scottish homeland. Here’s the program for this year’s virtual conference.

The program,  themed Flittin’ Day: Forces That Moved our Scottish Ancestors will include the following speakers and topics:

Sir Tom Devine	The puzzle of mass Scottish transatlantic emigration 1815 to 1914. Can it be convincingly resolved?
Professor Graeme Morton	Industrial Scotland, Industrial Dundee: Following the immigrant workforce
Dr. Frances Wilkins	The Songs that Stayed and the Songs that Were Taken Away: The Role of Music in the Lives of Scottish Migrants
Alison Spring	Researching Urban Ancestors in Scotland
Morag Peers	Crossing the Sea: Researching Scottish Ancestors
Professor Marjory Harper	Religious Movements, Fragmented Communities and Contentious Clerics: Secession, Migration and Emigration in 19th-century Scotland
Chris Fleet	Tracing Scottish Ancestors with Online Maps
Laura House	Genealogy, the Information Ecosystem, and Our Technofuture

Additionally, Graeme Morton, Morag Peers, Marjory Harper and Frances Wilkins will take part in the Expert Connect Q and A session together with additional guest experts.

For more information, visit the conference website HERE.

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/ .

Tuesday, 18 August  2026

2:00 PM EDT – Ottawa Virtual Genealogy Drop-In, for OGS Ottawa Branch
https://ottawa.ogs.on.ca/events/virtual-genealogy-drop-in-2-2026-08-18/

2:30 PM EDT – Ship Manifests and Oaths of Allegiance: Finding the Origin
Stories of 19th Century Immigrant Families, by Jeremy Verdusco for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/16670975

8:00 PM EDT – Supercharged Research: Working with AI Tools and Meeting Genealogical Standards, by David S. Ouimette for BCG (Board for Certification of Genealogists) / Legacy Family Tree Webinars. https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/supercharged-research-working-with-ai-tools-and-meeting-genealogy-standards

Wednesday, 19 August 2026

2:00 PM EDT – DNA in Action 4 of 6: The DNA FAN Club, by Karen Stanbary for Legacy Family Tree Webinars. https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/dna-in-action-4-of-6-the-dna-fan-club

Thursday, 20 August 2026

Friday, 21 August 2026

2:00 PM EDT – Migration Pathways Between Canada and the United States You Haven’t Explored, by Kathryn Lake Hogan for Legacy Family Tree Webinars (O Canada Series)
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/migration-pathways-between-canada-and-the-united-states-you-havent-considered

Saturday, 22 August 2026

Briefly, the contents of this issue.

MARRIAGES: BEYOND THE OFFICIAL RECORD
David Annal explains why there may be more than one source of information about our ancestors’ marriages.

WHAT DID YOUR ANCESTORS DO IN WAR WEAPONS WEEK?
Discover the nationwide range of community events — held to raise funds for the machinery of war during WW2— with Janet Smith.

BOOK REVIEWS
The Secrets of Our DNA: How Genetics Has Changed the World, By Turi King.
How to Research your Second World War Ancestors, By Simon Fowler
Samuel Pepys in 50 Places and Objects, By Paul Kendall.

A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO DNA PAINTER
Donna Rutherford’s deep dive shows how to use 6 key tools from DNA Painter.

WHAT DID YOUR ANCESTORS DO IN THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION?
The experts at Findmypast explain why this pivotal period offers an opportunity to discover how our ancestors lived — and worked.

FROM HOME TO HORIZON
Julie Johnson helps us understand the real person beyond the records, as she continues her Birth to Burial series.

Miscellaneous items I found interesting this week.

GeoPuzzle – Arrange the pieces of the world!

Beyond the 15‑minute city: What really makes people want to walk

London, drawn, a sprawling AI-generated city rendered in the style of a classic SimCity map.

Reading Maps: Journeys from fiction drawn on the real world

Map tools for family history
Free tools that turn your research into a map you can share — built for genealogists, and for anyone trying to show where a story happened.

New targeted warnings for severe thunderstorms and tornadoes
Canada’s Meteorological Service, part of ECCC, is improving warnings for severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. The area alerted will now be much more precise;  you are much more likely to see dangerous weather. I experienced this on Monday when a tornado warning came on my mobile phone, but didn’t appear on The Weather Network TV channel. It became real for me when a major branch fell from a tree across my back fence and landed in my garden.

Elias Ashmole: A 17th-century weatherman?
As a former meteorologist, this article by Rebecca Rideal grabbed my attention. Even if weather history isn’t your thing, take a look at the posts on her Substack.

OGS to Increase Fees
The Ontario Genealogical Society Board has approved an increase in the annual fee by $12, which translates to a dollar per year for the 12 years fees remained at $63. There will be a general meeting to approve what most people would accept as a reasonable increase given the recent operating deficits.

Thanks to the following individuals for their comments and tips: Anonymous, Jane MacNamara, Julia, Gail, Glenn, Teresa, TONI, and Unknown.