Anglo-Celtic Connections

1. Crowdsourcing through Social Media and Niche Forums

Leverage the power of collective knowledge by posting family names, locations, or intriguing stories on platforms like Reddit, Twitter, or Facebook groups dedicated to genealogy. Extend your reach by joining niche online forums focusing on specific regions, ethnic groups, or historical professions. This approach taps into a vast network of people who may share connections or possess access to rare records.

Pros:

• Access to a wide network of potential collaborators and experts.
• Potential to uncover rare or unexpected connections.
• Often free and relatively quick to implement.

Cons:

• Information quality can vary and requires verification.
• Privacy concerns when sharing family details online.
• May result in overwhelming responses that are hard to filter.

In case you’re wondering, this is the first response, raw and completely unedited, in an experiment with ChatGPT. I prompted it with “Suggest a disruptive approach or five to investigating your family history.  Please add pros and cons for each of the five items.”  Share your thoughts please.

Nine serials, new or with additions, just became available from Canadiana. They’re listed in the table below; those with more than a year or so of issues bolded. A date range in brackets indicates many missing issues within the range.

With these additions the Carleton Place Herald now has 575 issues available for 1851, 1855-56, 1858-65, 1871-75, and 1915-19. The issues were scanned from the microfilm held by Library and Archives Canada.

The Glencoe Transcript has 529 issues available for 1886-87, 1891, 1894, 1897, 1900, 1903, 1906, 1909, 1912, 1915-25. There are 1263 images, 1262 with full-text search.

Title	Publication Date	URL (if online)
Acadian recorder (Weekly)	July 6, 1839; August 9, 1851	https://www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.N_00458
London advertiser	February 3, 1921-March 24, 1921; March 26, 1921-April 6, 1921	https://www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.N_00255
Outlook (Middleton, N.S.)	October 9, 1924-December 31, 1925	https://www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.N_00695
The Berlin news record	June 28, 1913-June 30, 1913	https://www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.N_00296
The Carleton-Place herald	[October 11, 1855-March 17, 1875]	https://www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.N_00543
The Glencoe transcript	January 7, 1915-August 3, 1916; August 17, 1916-December 20, 1917; January 3, 1918-December 19, 1918; January 2, 1919-December 25, 1924	https://www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.N_00227
The Truro daily news	December 13, 1900-December 24, 1900	https://www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.N_00593
Weekly news (Nelson, B.C.)	[January 6, 1906-December 12, 1908]	https://www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.N_00322
Weekly news record (Kitchener, Ont. : 1911)	[February 2, 1911-June 27, 1911]	https://www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.N_00312

Exploring our family history involves more than consulting BMD certificates, census records, official and family documents, like Bibles, and photos held by the family. By embracing innovative methods and challenging traditional approaches, we can uncover surprising connections and insights that might remain hidden.

I will post five disruptive strategies for transforming genealogical research in the coming days.  Whether through technology, unconventional sources, or a contrarian mindset, these strategies offer new pathways to understanding the past.

This week’s release of the Teesside, England, Electoral Registers, 1832–1974 collection on Ancestry is valuable for genealogists researching Middlesbrough residents eligible to vote. As shown below, I found records for my ancestry.

Electoral rolls were created annually (with exceptions during wartime) and offer key details about individuals and their voting eligibility. The Teesside collection, similar to others, includes:
– Name and Address: Identify where an ancestor lived and track changes in residence over time.
– Parliamentary Division and Parish: Provides the voter’s electoral area.
– Nature of Qualification to Vote: Revealing how individuals qualified, such as through property ownership, occupation, or residency. Abbreviations in these records include R (residence qualification), B or BP (business premises qualification), O (occupation qualification), HO (qualification through husband’s occupation). NM (naval or military vote).

This collection joins electoral roll records from various places and sources, including Ancestry, Findmypast, FamilySearch and The Genealogist. Besides Teesside, counties and areas with significant electoral roll coverage include:

– Kent (Registers from 1570–1907)
– Norfolk(1832–1915)
– Cheshire (1842–1900)
– Greater Manchester (1820–1940)
– London, Lambeth (1832–1886)
– Hampshire, Portsmouth (1835–1873)
– Leicestershire (1836–1970)
– Somerset (1832–1914)
– Devon, Plymouth & West Devon (1780–1973)
– City of York (1848–1938)

For Teeside, I found my step-great grandfather included in 1885-86, 1906-1914, and 1918- 1939 entries filling in the chasm between censuses. The latter years include my great-grandmother — after women got the vote.

Local archives and libraries often house original registers, offering additional resources for those areas and times not online.

A little bird informs me that Findmypast will be moving the 1921 census of England and Wales to the regular subscription in January. I found no independent source.

Findmypast has a history of initially making exclusive databases available on a premium basis, capturing the consumer surplus from those anxious for information. That happened before with the 1911 census and the 1939 Register. The lower-cost makes examining those on outlying branches of the family tree, neighbours and associates affordable.

Choose from selected free online events today. All times are ET except as noted. Assume registration in advance is required; check so you’re not disappointed. Find out about a few more, mainly US events, at Conference Keeper.

Tuesday, 10 December

2 pm: Leveraging MyHeritage DNA Tools to Make New Discoveries. by Ran Snir for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/leveraging-myheritage-dna-tools-to-make-new-discoveries/

2:30 pm:  German Genealogy, by Till Fehmer for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/12189303

Wednesday, 11 December

7:30 pm: Cornish Settlements of Hamilton Township. by Scott Baker for Lakeshore Genealogical Society. 
Inquiries or Registration: LGSregister@gmail.com

8 pm:  Researching in 17th Century Connecticut, by Ann G. Lawthers for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/researching-in-17th-century-connecticut/

Thursday, 12 December

6:30 pm: Breaking Down Irish Brick Walls: Successful Case Studies In Identifying Your Place of Origin, by Kerri Tannenbaum for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/12189466

7 pm: 20th Century Canadian Burials in Military Cemeteries, by Kathy Kirkpatrick for OGS Perth and Elgin Branches.
https://ogs.on.ca/20th-century-canadian-burials-in-military-cemeteries-kathy-kirkpatrick/

Friday, 13 December

2 pm:  Reflecting on AI in Genealogy: 2024’s Lessons and 2025’s Pathways, by Steve Little for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/reflecting-on-ai-in-genealogy-2024s-lessons-and-2025s-pathways/

Saturday 14 December

9 am: BIFHSGO Annual Holiday Social
10 am: Great Moments in Genealogy 
An Unexpected Gift. by Carol Annett
(From the Vaults) It Happened in Coolross, by Ann Burns
Blown Away, by Veronica Scrimger
Over the “Golden Bridge”—The unexpected discovery of more British home children in my family tree, by Nancy Higgins

 

James Powell’s latest blog post in Today in Ottawa’s History is the story of William James Topley, a giant of nineteenth-century Canadian photography. LAC holds the vast Topley archive; look to it for photos of Ottawa’s and Parliament’s elites; purchased in 1936 for $3,000.
https://todayinottawashistory.wordpress.com/2024/12/07/william-j-topley-studio/

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week

Victorian Christmases were both thrifty and indulgent – try these DIY projects and yours could be too

First Four RootsTech 2025 Keynote Speakers Announced

Finding Your British WWI Soldier — Dead or Alive
I recommend Paul Milner’s presentation for Legacy Family Tree Webinars, free to all until Tuesday.

The Greater Sudbury Public Library was awarded the Vivid-Pix Memory Station system, which was donated to the Ontario genealogy community in June at the OGS Conference.

Legacy Family Tree Webinars have extended the last date for their 50% off offer for new subscriptions to today, Sunday, 8 December 2024.

National Library of Scotland YouTube Videos

GenCast
An article in the journal Nature discussed GenCast, a new AI weather prediction model from Google DeepMind. It is reported to be more accurate than today’s best operational forecast model from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting.  Oversimplifying it’s a multidimensional analogy technique. Analogy forecasting has a long history – see this article from 1901.I look forward to an independent evaluation and real-time GenCast forecasts becoming publicly available.

How close is AI to human-level intelligence?
AI hasn’t yet achieved the broad, flexible reasoning that humans naturally possess. Significant progress is being made, but a fully human-like AI remains a future possibility rather than a current reality.

Thanks to this week’s contributors: Ann Burns, Anonymous, Brenda Turner, Bruce Elliott, Gail, Glenn Wright, Julia, Marg, Nick Mcdonald,  Teresa, and Unknown.

TheGenealogist has announced the release of the complete 1910 Lloyd George Domesday survey records for Kent. It covers over 1,400 square miles and documents nearly half a million individuals and organizations.

This release brings the total coverage of the Lloyd Geoge Domesday to 8,600 Square miles and over 3.7 Million individuals and organizations covering London, Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Oxfordshire, Middlesex, Northamptonshire, Surrey, and Wiltshire.

On 4 December, I mentioned using the FamilySearch Experimental Full-Text Search to find a record of my two-time great-grandfather, William Henry Northwood. He took out US citizenship on 8 June 1887 in Leavenworth, Kansas. 

Shortly afterwards, I found more about him thanks to a collection of names and stories on MyHeritage. AI extracted it from OldNews.com newspaper pages found in the Fort Griffin (Texas) Echo of 1 November 1879.

Now available, based on newspapers, are:
658 million records from Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi,
998 million records from Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and Nebraska,
1 billion records for Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania,
651 million records from North Carolina, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia.

More is coming. Expected to be published this month are 16 similar collections “covering the entire United States and several additional countries.”

It’s a good bet that Canadian newspapers will be included. MyHeritage already has a Canada Newspapers, 1752-2007 collection, originating from Google’s abandoned newspaper digitization initiative. That goes back to Ottawa-based Paper of Record. Stay tuned.

According to Daniel Horowitz of MyHeritage “This AI is designed to extract not just names from the newspaper articles but also the relatives of every person mentioned, as well as additional fields such as occupations, residences, travel from one location to another, and more.”

Find out more in this MyHeritage blog post.

 

Southwark Rate Books
These 12,83,820 new Southwark rate book records list the names of occupiers and owners, value, and whether the property was rented or owned. 

Southwark Poor Law Records
The collection includes examination books, removal orders, poor relief payments, and more — 82,455 Southwark records covering the 1630s to the 1860s. Images of the original record are available together with transcript information. Find a combination of: Name, Event date, Age, Birth year, Occupation, Marital Status, Residence, Parish remove to, Father’s name, Spouse’s name, Children’s name, Master’s name. With advancing technology, is Findmypast looking at how searchable transcriptions of the full text can be made available.

Greater London Marriage Index
25,980 marriage records have been added from Westminster, Bromley-by-Bow, and the East End to the existing collection. There are now 487,476 marriages in the collection from 123 places. Dates range from 1502 to 1871. Anglican, Non-conformists, and Quaker marriages are included.

 

The three feature articles for this special Christmas issue are:

No Laughing Matter: The Battle of Arnhem
The comedian, podcaster and historian Al Murray discusses his new book Arnhem: BlackTuesday: The Classic Battle Told As Never Before. The material was covered in a podcast and on YouTube at We Have Ways of Making You Talk.

Census Websites
Sarah Williams searches Ancestry, Findmypast and
TheGenealogist to find out which is best for the census. One edges out the other two.

A Childhood Christmas 
Caroline Roope explores the origins of the much-loved Christmas traditions, from nativity plays, pantomimes, hanging up stockings, and much more.

The articles categorized as Reseatch Advice are:

Focus On
Dr Simon Wills reveals the history of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, and how to search a free collection of records released online 200 years after its creation.

Best Websites
Jonathan Scott rounds up the online resources for audio and video that bring our forebears’ place and time to life. FirstSounds brings back to life some rare recordings on all but unplayable formats.

Record Masterclass
Nicola Morris explains how to find your Irish ancestors’ school records, many of which are available digitally

Tecn Tips
Nick Peers shares his expert advice for using the Findmypast mobile app to improve your online tree

There’s also a Canadian article, inspired by a 1888 Christmas letter from Harriet Bullock in Montreal, who was an early campaigner for women’s rights.