Anglo-Celtic Connections

When searching for a contemporary cousin, rejoice when you find a voter’s list.

With the recent update, Ancestry’s database UK, Electoral Registers, 2011-2018 now contains  45,527,687 entries.

Records include the name, birth date (range), residence date (range), address, and residence place.

This database is based on the open version of the electoral register, which does not include all the information collected. Individuals can opt out of inclusion; in 2018, about 25 million did.

The new Cheshire, England, Roman Catholic Baptism, Marriage, and Burial Registers, 1644-1913 collection includes 403,929 records, with indexes, transcriptions, and images of original documents.  Derived from holdings of Cheshire Archives and Local Studies, the communities included are:

Altrincham
Birkenhead
Bollington
Chester
Congleton
Crewe
Hooton
Hyde
Knutsford
Liscard
Little Neston
Macclesfield
Middlewich
Nantwich
Northwich
Puddington Hall
Runcorn
Sale
Seacombe
Stalybridge
Stockport
Upton by Birkenhead
Wilmslow

 

This collection, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, Poor Law Applications and Registers, 1818-1923, contains 81,707 records relating to the relief of people in the historic counties of Aberdeenshire, Banffshire, and Kincardineshire.

Most of the records for Aberdeen City were destroyed during the Second World War.

Communities included are: Aberdour, Aboyne, Auchindoir & Kearn, Auchterless, Banchory Devenick, Banchory Ternan, Belhelvie, Birse, Bourtie, Cairney, Chapel of Garioch, Cluny, Coull, Crathie and Braemar, Daviot, Drumblade, Drumoak, Dunnottar, Dyce, Echt, Ellon, Fetteresso, Fintray, Forglen, Forgue, Fraserburgh, Fyvie, Gartly, Glass, Glenbuchat, Glenmuick, Tullich and Glengairn, Huntly, Inverkeithny, Inverurie, Keig, Keithhall & Kinkell, Kemnay, Kildrummy, Kincardine O´Neil, Kinellar, King Edward, Kinneff, Kintore, Laurencekirk, Leochel Cushnie, Logie Buchan, Logie Coldstone, Longside, Lonmay, Lumphanan, Marnoch, Maryculter, Marykirk, Meldrum, Methlick, Monquhitter, Monymusk, New Deer, New Machar, Newhills, Nigg, Old Deer, Old Machar, Peterculter, Peterhead, Rathen, Rhynie, Skene, Slains, St Fergus, Strathdon, Tarland and Migvie, Tarves, Towie, Tullynessle and Forbes, Tyrie.

Ancestry provides this collection in association with Aberdeenshire and Aberdeen City Archives.

Choose from selected free online events in the next five three 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. 

The latest addition to the National Library of Scotland’s online maps collection is Historic parks in England map viewer, 1890s-1900s.

This viewer allows you to explore the evolving boundaries of England’s ancient parks and designed landscapes.

What green space was near an ancestral home?

The OS Historic Parks Layer draws on analysis of over 10,000 maps and 1,701 map tiles from the OS 6-Inch 2nd Edition England Maps (1888-1915). Machine learning and deep learning technologies were used to identify and classify the historic symbology used for parks, gardens, and designed landscapes.

Diane Brook’s article, Ancient DNA for Genealogy, featured on the cover, summarizes what is known about our shared human past as revealed by artifacts, remains and DNA.
Of interest for those like me with a male line signature type R1b, once thought to be original to the first European farmers, ancient DNA shows that R1b did not occur in Europe before the Early Bronze Age Eastern Ukraine Yamnaya migration.
The article concludes by explaining what information about the ancient components of a client’s DNA 23&Me, LivingDNA, FamilyTreeDNA, and Gedmatch provide.

Calgary genealogist Wayne Shepheard, in The Plague Years, writes on the periods of the Back Death and its aftermath, 1846-1352, and the Great Plague of London in 1665. He exploits the scant records, which are not available in most areas. It recommends “it may be worthwhile for genealogists to look beyond just the parish register and BMD numbers to see what the environmental conditions were like. The rates of death and how families were impacted may demonstrate more about the causes of death, aside from epidemics such as plague.”

There’s lots more. You could spend hours chasing the leads in the issue. Be selective. In her editor’s column, Helen Tovey mentions recently just concentrating on “one family history point at a time—focussing on enjoying it, turning it over in my mind, and seeing what more I can uncover, slowly and carefully chipping away.
And it feels as though it’s time very well (and peacefully) spent.” Was she inspired by Thinking Fast and Slow? After all, no fight or flight danger needs immediate response in genealogy.

National School Admission Registers & Log-Books, 1870-1914, is augmented with 6,600 images and transcriptions from the Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith, Middlesex, from 1870 to 1914.

These school records include basic information like names, birth details, and admission dates, as well as school location and parental information. You often find additional rich details such as admission numbers, religious instruction exemptions, residence, parental occupation, previous schooling information, reasons for absences, and exam results.

British In India, Directories 1792-1959
Find 104,830 directory images from India, beginning with British occupation in the 19th century and spanning up to post-independence, from 1947.

Newspapers
This week, the archive grew by 202,120 pages with updates to 19 existing publications, most post 1960. New this week are Derbyshire’s Glossop Times, 1877, 1889-1891, 1894, and Milton Keynes Citizen, 1989, 1993, 1995.

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

If you enjoyed the previous episode of the Our DNA Journey series with Johnny Vegas and Alex Brooker, you may like this one.

LMA RIP
The London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) is being renamed The London Archives. Will the acronym be TLA, following TNA, or just LA?  The three-letter acronym (TLA) is standard.
https://news.cityoflondon.gov.uk/city-archives-ditches-metropolitan-to-end-confusion-over-collections-and-reach-out-to-new-audiences/

New TNA Guides
The National Archives has new guides providing a brief overview of resources that can help trace family history from the UK to its former colonies. They are introductions to the sorts of records held, with links to guides providing more detailed advice on how to find the records in TNA’s collection.
North American ancestors – an overview

FamilyTreeDNA users can now easily transfer their family trees to MyHeritage for free.
https://blog.myheritage.com/2024/07/new-collaboration-with-familytreedna/

Maps
Although not Ancestry’s strength, three new browseable map collections were added on 15 July.
UK, General Map of Great Britain, 1935-1937, an image-only collection of a fourth-edition Ordnance Survey map of Great Britain at a scale of one-quarter inch equals a mile.
UK, Bacon’s Atlases, 1900, images of maps showing details of cities and villages, roads, railroads, and topographical information.
Europe, Cassini Maps, 1800-1960 providing snapshots of Europe, capturing over 150 years of jurisdictions and geographical features.

Climatologically today, 21 July, is the hottest day of the year in Ottawa.
At the Experimental Farm, the local station with the longest record, the average maximum temperature is 26.7C, the average minimum 15.7C.
That doesn’t mean the heat is behind us. The record for hottest days in Ottawa extends to the second week of August.

Find over one million (1,006,342) records in this collection from the Gwent Archives.

The records, mostly registers of workhouse admissions, document those who sought relief provided to individuals by workhouses. The collection also has registers of births, marriages, and deaths compiled by the workhouses. Most records are for workhouses in Abergavenny, Bedwellty, Chepstow, Monmouth, Newport, and Pontypool.

There are currently 3,893  items in Collection Search identified as Co-Lab-only contributions, a jump from 3,839 last month!

A new challenge, Games of the XXI Olympiad, Montréal 1976, appeared.

LAC has reformatted the way Co-Lab Challenge items are presented on the website. Therefore, progress from previous months cannot be evaluated as previously. Is that a tactic to obscure the lack of interest in the challenges?

 

Here’s one I missed in Tuesday’s blog post.

TOPIC: Maps Useful in Tracing Family History

SPEAKER: Margaret (Peg) Mackle Kapustiak.

WHEN: Saturday, July 20, 2024 – 11 AM to 1 PM, Eastern Time (US & Canada)

WHERE: BIGWILL meeting via ZOOM, free to attend!

Peg Kapustiak’s topic will be “30 Different Maps, plus Using the Internet to Locate Maps Useful for Family History.” The past is not hidden; we see it every day, though we often do not even know it. Maps can unlock details about your family or lead you to new resources. Peg will help us explore various kinds of maps, look at details included and not included, and offer suggestions on locating maps for the British Islands, using various sources, including the Internet.

Register in advance for the Zoom meeting:

https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMlcuygrz4jGdMDcsIV9gdkdJ973myICpDz

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. No registration is necessary for the live meeting at the Church.

Peg Kapustiak’s presentations and handouts are designed to provide you with extremely practical tips, ideas, links, and sources. She has been a genealogist and family historian for 46 years and has researched her family history in the Chicago area, the Midwest, New England, and New York state plus ten countries in both Europe and Asia, when she lived overseas. She has provided over 180 talks to organizations both nationally and internationally in the past 24 years, is the author of one book and 56 research articles and currently volunteers at five historical/genealogical organizations.