Anglo-Celtic Connections

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

Presenters (l-r) Ann Burns, Nancy Higgins, Carol Annett, and Veronica Scrimger gave exceptional presentations at the BIFHSGO December meeting, which will be available on replay for BIFHSGO members shortly.

How Canada Should Respond to Trump

Here’s how to contact an Australian in 1946

Reflecting on AI in Genealogy: 2024’s Lessons and 2025’s Pathways
Steve Little’s summary from 50,000 ft at Legacy Family Tree Webinars – free until 20 December.

Thanks to this week’s contributors: Ann Burns, Anonymous, Brenda Turner, Dawn Kelly, Gail, Helen Gillespie, Nick Mcdonald, Teresa, and Unknown.

Southwark Vaccination Registers
From the 1860s through to the 1910s, most from 1872 to the early 1900s, the 272,567 records give name, date of birth, place of birth, year of birth, date of vaccination, father’s name, and place. Transcriptions and images of the original record are available.
Vaccination was a hot topic. Advocates opposed compulsory vaccination and the medical profession supported it.
Not in this release, the Southwark Archives holds vaccination registers and reports for 1908-48.

Southwark Apprentices
988 unique Southwark apprentice records from the 1800 – with transcripts and images available. Details available are: name, year of birth, age, year of apprenticeship, master’s name, and parish.

London, Court of the Peculiar of the Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s Cathedral
From the 16th and 17th centuries, the 3,216 new records in this collection may reveal details about matters such as wills for which there are full-text transcriptions.

Newspapers
473,524 new pages from Scotland to Shropshire

 

All data are “Web” entries derived from the Corps of Military Police. https://www.corpsofmilitarypolice.org

“A dataset consisting of 56,302 soldiers of the Corps of Military Police, Corps of Military Police (India) and Royal Military Police holding records of 2360 casualties with memorials in 995 cemeteries across 51 countries, 12,585 decorations/medals and 947 Prisoners of War. Casualties are linked to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC). Where known a link to the London Gazette entry for decoration/awards is provided. Use the Army Number Search tool to find original regimental number blocks. To learn more about the Corps of Military Police/Royal Military Police contact the official RMP museum at: RHQ RMP Website .”

Annual Holiday Social / 9 a.m. EST

Join us for the Holiday Social, focusing on our 30th anniversary. We look forward to having members share stories of “What gifts BIFHSGO has given me over the last 30 years.”  Come and also share holiday treats.

Great Moments in Genealogy / 10 a.m. EST

An Unexpected Gift
Presenter: Carol Annett

This presentation focuses on Carol’s third great-grandmother, Ann Gillies McPherson. An unexpected gift of information broke down a 10-year-old brick wall and led Carol to discover the complete story of her ancestor.

Carol Annett has been doing genealogy research for over 15 years. She enjoys travelling to places where her forebears lived in Scotland and in Canada. A member of the BIFHSGO writing group, Carol enjoys writing about her ancestors.

(From the Vaults) It Happened in Coolross
Presenter: Ann Burns

This is the story of the amazing coincidence that happened while Ann was travelling in Ireland with her father in 2008. He wanted to see where his paternal great-grandparents came from. They booked a self-driving trip that included visiting Islandmagee, County Antrim, where his great-grandmother, Eliza McCullough, was born, followed by a few days in County Wicklow, where his great-grandfather, Edward Byrne, came from. Ann had driven on the left side of the road before, but the Irish roads offered? a special treat. They found nothing helpful in Islandmagee, viewing every headstone in every Presbyterian cemetery. They met and were treated by some really lovely people, but they had a life-changing experience searching for the townland of Coolross in County Wicklow. And it happened on September 11.

Ann Burns is a retired civil servant working on her family history since 2002. She was born and brought up in Ottawa, as were her parents. Both sides of her family still feel much more connected to their Irish roots than those from England and France. She has travelled widely, but she has spent most of her time in Ireland in recent years. She does most of her research herself but has hired a local genealogist in County Wicklow from time to time. That research confirmed what they found on that extraordinary day.

Blown Away
Presenter: Veronica Scrimger

This Great Moments presentation highlights Veronica’s journey in 2019 to discover her grandfather’s foster home in the Shetland Islands.

Over the last ten years in retirement, Veronica Scrimger has been travelling to various parts of Scotland and England to follow different ancestors’ footsteps. While all the trips have been incredibly rewarding, this Shetland one was a standout.

Over the “Golden Bridge”—The unexpected discovery of more British home children in my family tree
Presenter: Nancy Higgins

Nancy’s paternal granddad, William Stephen Higgins, was always “known” to be a British home child, though that has yet to be confirmed. He remains her brick wall, which she puts aside to pursue her easier Roper and Jefford maternal lines. A chance conversation in 2019 at one of BIFHSGO’s coffee breaks opened the door to unknown British home children in her family tree: William’s wife and Nancy’s granny, Mary Ann Rodger, and her younger sister, Helen. Following up on a few of the suggestions from this conversation has led to the discovery of Mary Ann and Helen’s sad past and their eventual journey to Canada.

Nancy Higgins retired from IBM after a long consulting career. She now enjoys spending her time as a family historian while creating new family stories with her grandkids and indulging in her love of floral design. Nancy discovered she is related to not one but three British home children and the proud descendant of two, her paternal grandmother and grandfather. After a sojourn on the West Coast, Nancy has returned to live again in Ottawa. She looks forward to the day when her research is organized and, in the meanwhile, derives pleasure from the journey of discovering her roots and creating family stories to share.

This is a hybrid meeting:

• In person at Knox Presbyterian Church (Lisgar & Elgin) in Geneva Hall.  Please use the Garden Entrance on Elgin Street. Limited free street parking is available on Saturdays, and the City Hall Parking Garage is available for $2.00.
• Online by registering here. This registration covers both events

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.