A quick look at a selection of the contents of the new issue.

RESEARCHING MEDIEVAL
ANCESTORS
With professional genealogist Chris Paton, discover routes to learning about your family in the Middle Ages.

JIMMY MILLER – ‘MY FAMOUS FOOTBALLER ANCESTOR’
Researcher Lisa Edwards discovers a true champion in her tree.

ENHANCE YOUR FAMILY HISTORY WITH MAPS, PHOTOS & TAX RECORDS
Family Tree Academy tutor David Annal demonstrates how to weave together clues found in several documents to take your research to the next level.

WHY CAN’T | FIND MY IRISH ANCESTORS?
Professional researcher David Ryan has solutions to help you.

THE HISTORY OF THE BRITISH PUB
CAMRA supporter Mike Bedford tells the history of these much-loved institutions.

THE LESSONS | LEARNT WHEN | STARTED DNA
DNA advisor Karen Evans shares tips to help you navigate some of the stumbling blocks you may encounter on your first
foray into DNA.

I’m always interested to see the new books profiled, many of which are not yet, and may never be available in bookatores in Canada.

How Finland survived Stalin: from winter war to cold war
by Kimmon Rentola
Published by Yale University Press at £25 (hardback), ISBN
978000273618.

Iron, stone and steam: Britain’s railway empire
by Tim Bryan
Published by Amberley Publishing at £25
(hardback), ISBN 9781398112698.

Has anybody here seen Kelly?: In search of my
father |
by Joe Cushnan
Published by FeedARead (paperback) at £6.99, ISBN
9781803022451. [Published 2021]

IT Girls: Pioneering Women in Computing
by John S. Croucher
Published by Amberley Publishing (hardback) at
£22.99. ISBN 9781398112292.

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

The Runcible Spoon

“They dined on mince and slices of quince,
which they ate with a runcible spoon.”

You’ll likely recognize the line from Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussycat” which immediately came to mind in reading a list of wedding gifts to a distant relative in the 10 August 1928 edition of the Sussex Chronicle and Sussex Observer. They received two gifts of Runcible Spoons.

Browsing other hits on runcible in the British Newspaper Archive I found no mention of such utensils in lists of wedding gifts.

Wikipedia defines it as “a fork with three broad curved tines and a sharpened edge, used with pickles or hors d’oeuvres, such as a pickle fork. It is used as a synonym for “spork”.”

Do you have a favourite crumboblious term that Lear or others used?

Sir Arthur Doughty
Word is that the statue of Sir Arthur Doughty, for many years has behind the LAC building at 395 Wellington, is being moved. Preparations will start next Friday with the move on Saturday. The destination is the LAC complex in Gatineu.

Gemini Ultra – Full Review
With the release of Google’s Gemini Ultra this week, including available in Canada which Bard that it replaces wasn’t, there;s a real competitatoe to GPT4.

This YouTube video, a bit specialist, but interesting if you like that kind of thing, is a good review. Personally I found Gemini was able to interpolate data using a cubic spline that Bing, which supposedly used GPT4, couldn’t do. In another case I had to be persistant to finally get it to extract matching items from a table of contents.

London Roll
A database of the records of eleven London livery companies can be searched on the website of London Roll. The records of additional companies are due to be added in the future. Via https://genealogyjude.com/2024/02/10/judes-gen-february-2024/

a temes loff
From the Essex Record Office blog.

A huge new collection of 45,527,734 people. 2011-2018 is long into the period when men and women were equally enfranchized.

Look to find:

Name
Residence Date
Address
Residence Place

Although residents are not eligible to vote until age 18, they can complete their registration beginning at age 16 (age 14 in Scotland and Wales). To register, one must be a British citizen, a European Union citizen living in the United Kingdom, or be one of certain individuals with permission to stay in the United Kingdom or who do not need permission.

I couldn’t find some family members who I know should be in the registers., likely as individuals had the option of declining to be included in the open register.

This is a collection to dip into when looking for a diversion. I entered just the name of my old hometown in the Description search box. It returned links to three photos described as:

Members of the WRNS remove materials from a drifter
at Gorleston Quay, Norfolk.

Storekeepers of the WRNS removing stores from a
drifter on her return from foreign service, Gorleston
Quay.

Members of the WRNS remove materials from a drifter
at Gorleston Quay, Norfolk, during the First World War.

It’s obviously posed as each shows the women doing the work while the men watch.

Here’s the lineup for the online-only BIFHSGO meeting on Saturday.

9 am: Back to Basics: Census Records, by Ken McKinlay

Census enumerations have been around for millennia. We will be looking at what census records have survived for the countries that make up the British Isles. We will also take a look at possible census substitutes to help fill in some of the gaps in the records.

10 am: Researching Female Ancestors What Could They Tell Us? by M. Diane Rogers

Researching female ancestors can be frustrating. Sometimes even their obituaries say almost nothing. Diane will provide examples of strategies to use in searching genealogical sources for information about women and in learning about women’s history resources.

Find our more, including the link to register and information about a watch party at the Ottawa City Archives, at https://www.bifhsgo.ca/events

Deceased Online recently digitized a trove of records, 87,830 names, from three historic cemeteries within the Borough of Halton in Cheshire, England. Located 20 km southeast of Liverpool, spanning the Mersey, the Borough of Halton includes the towns of Runcorn and Widnes.

The newly available records encompass Halton, Widnes, and Runcorn Cemeteries and comprise digital scans of the burial registers or computerized records and grave details for each grave and its occupants.

Halton Cemetery,  a non-denominational burial ground in operation since the mid-1800s, located by the Shopping City in Runcorn, has just 2,227 records. There are three First World War Commonwealth War Graves Commission burials.

Widnes Cemetery, also known as Widnes Gardens, at Birchfield Road, is known for its beautiful grounds and historic chapel.The collection includes 44,820 burial records from 1898 onward. The CWGC maintains 102 graves.

Runcorn Cemetery, at Langdale Road in Runcorn, comprises 40,783 records from 1860, including of 75 CWGC graves.

Also under the care of Halton Borough Council, but not in this release, is Peel House Cemetery, at Incline Way Widnes.​

Information about the cemeteries, including maps, is at https://www3.halton.gov.uk/Pages/BirthsDeathsMarriages/haltoncem.aspx

Deceased Online also holds collections from Cheshire East Council, Cheshire West and Chester Council, Trafford Council, and Salford Council – a broad range of records for research focused on Cheshire and the wider North West England region.

A series of blog posts from Hound on the Hunt, affiliated with Alberta-based Shop the Hound , each is illustrated with AI produced images.

Part One, of three so far, explores the MyHeritage AI Biographer. It provides a biographical report based on information you have entered, the historical context, and the surname.

Part Three does much the same for Ancestry, using an ancestor’s profile and Lifestory,

Part Two delves into ChatGPT. It’s by far the most interesting and ends with:

I’m fairly certain you can see that I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole.. but I think it might be a good one because it’s making me excited about working more on ChatGPT, and it’s most certainly worth the $20/month at this point, and the fun I’ve had exploring, and there’s more to come.

 

If you have Lancashire ancestry the County Archives has a lot to offer, a treasure trove of historical and cultural significance.

That includes the Red Rose Collections, with nearly 30,000 historic photographs of Lancashire people and places. Also, find indexes to two key collections: Whittingham Asylum patients from 1873-1914 and Lancashire Constabulary police officers from 1840-1925.

In addition, the Red Rose Collections provides access to an index of newspaper articles from the early 19th century onwards. These articles are not linked, but held on microfilm and cuttings in files in libraries across Lancashire and serve as a chronicle of the Duchy’s past. The British Newspaper Archive and Newspaper.com may provide more convenient access,

If you don’t find what your looking for try searching LANCAT, Lancashire Archives online catalogue, containing descriptions of over 1.5 million documents from within the collections. There’s also a useful church registers guide.

The PRDH (Programme de recherche en démographie historique) database contains a directory of civil status records (baptisms, marriages and burials) in Quebec (1621-1799), a genealogical dictionary of families (1621-1765) and a directory of couples and descendants.

I received an email that today PRDH is adding 738,696 records, 544,537 individuals and 94,264 families to the database. That’s the second largest update in its 24 year history.

The PRDH database, with records to 1861, along with Généalogie Québec, is openly available to Ottawa Public Library cardholders.

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. Find out about many more mainly US events at Conference Keeper at https://conferencekeeper.org

A quick look at some of the the contents in the latest issue.

Workhouse records — Peter Higginbotham’s comprehensive guide to the
documents generated by the Poor Law.

Bigamy — Bigamy laws have changed over the centuries. Fairly constant, though, is the differing treatment of female and male bigamists. Rebecca Probert explains.

Tuberculosis  — Michelle Higgs investigates the development of special hospitals where one of the deadliest diseases of Victorian Britain were treated.

Travel and passenger lists —  Chloe O’Shea shares her expert advice for locating and using records left by people who travelled overseas — whether to start new lives or for work or leisure.

The Holocaust — Jonathan Scott reveals his go-to list, best websites for researching ancestors touched by the Holocaust.

Kent — Jonathan Scott digs into the archives in Kent with a complete guide to family history records in the county.