Anglo-Celtic Connections

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

Popular Recent YouTube Videos

Video Title	Views per day (approx.)
Ant & Dec Track Down Their Ancestors In Ireland (PART ONE)	23636
The Irish Heroes of the US Civil War	8000
Origin Story with Gabby Douglas & Natalie Hawkins	4400
Ancestry.com Shock: Finding My Brother’s Hidden Offspring	2500
Lesley Manville’s grandad was a revolutionary!	1800
Ancestry Profile Makeover	1667

Note: The “Ant & Dec” video  shows an exceptionally high views per day rate due to its recency (8 hours old at the time of data collection).

Goblincore, cottagegoth (sic).
Persephone’s blog post leads me to this

.

DNA Tests Discount
Looking for a Y-DNA or mtDNA test. Family Tree DNA has discounts throughout August.
AncestryDNA’s autosomal test is $79, reduced from $129, plus taxes and shipping, until 11 August. For an extra $1, new subscribers can add a three-month World Deluxe Membership.

Weather Chat
The European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) has an experimental AI-based assistant. You can ask questions like Will it rain in Toronto on Wednesday? Get a summary chart for the next 10 days by asking for a meteogram for a city of interest.

Alan Turing to ‘answer questions’ in new AI display

Thanks to this week’s contributors: Anonymous, Brenda Turner, gail benjafield, Gillian Leitch, Nick McDonald, Teresa, Unknown.

This is one of those weeks where FMP is scraping the bottom of the barrel. Or, that could be unearthing hidden treasures if you have an ancestor among the 19,990 new records from Yorkshire this week. The 3,853 baptism records come from “parishes across Yorkshire” between 1859 and 1924. Just over sixteen thousand monumental inscriptions are from as far back as the 17th century.

Newspapers with additions before 1900 this week are the South Eastern Advertiser (Sussex) for 1861-1896, 1898-1902, 1907-1915, 1917, Belfast News-Letter, 1767, Bognor Regis Observer, 1883, 1961-1969, Lancaster Guardian, 1853-1854, 1856, 1909, 1911-1912, 1957-1967, 1975, 1988-1990, 1992, 1998, Market Rasen Weekly Mail, 1875, Rugby Advertiser, 1873, 1900, 1994-1995, 1999, 2002, and Thame Gazette, 1876, 1983-1985, 1987-1994, 2001-2003.

Four of the 153 people interred in Ottawa’s Beechwood Cemetery who died on 3 August died in 1885.

The deaths in the Ancestry record for Beechwood range from 1874 to 1988, which is 114 years. There have to be days with more than one death. How much of a coincidence is four on exactly the same day?

According to the binomial distribution, the probability is 1.13%. Four deaths on the same day would be expected on at least three days of the year.

Carrying it further, exactly 5 out of 153 people dying on the same day of the same year over 114 years is approximately 0.003, or about 0.3%. That’s about one day in the year.

Much more than that would indicate an anomaly such as an epidemic or tragedy.

You might be surprised that almost a quarter of the years, 23.7%, would have no deaths. Ancestry’s Beechwood record shows 30 years have no burials for 3 August deaths.

According to a blog post by The National Archives (UK), between 1937 and 1948, the British Council operated a scholarship program that brought 1,400 people from all over the world to study in the UK. The records are individually catalogued and can be searched in the Discovery Catalogue in series BW 84.

While most came from countries outside the British Commonwealth, 16 were from Canada. With one exception, they studied at and just after the end of WW2.

Name	Year of Birth	Course of Study	Place of Study	Date	Reference
Ivor, D.	1909	Economics	London School of Economics	1939-1940	BW 84/7/17
Lear, Eli	1902	Natural History	University of Aberdeen	1947-1948	BW 84/55/7
Wright, Anna	1910	Education – the teaching of Empire	–	1946-1947	BW 84/45/4
Briggs, William	1907	Philosophy	Brasenose College, Oxford	1947-1948	BW 84/55/1
Uprichard, Muriel	1911	Education	Institute	1944-1945	BW 84/19/2
Fisher, Bruce H.	[unknown]	Economics and History	Cambridge University	1945-1946	BW 84/29/1
Baker, Laura Doris	1920	Education – adjustment of children	–	1946-1947	BW 84/45/1
Fox, Paul Wesley	1921	Political Philosophy	London School of Economics	1947-1948	BW 84/55/2
Maclean, A Harry	1918	PhD	Cambridge University	1944-1945	BW 84/19/3
Macbeth, Mary Esther	1913	Literature	Oxford University	1945-1946	BW 84/29/2
Leitch, Martha S.	1918	Town Planning	The Housing Centre London	1944-1945	BW 84/19/1
Cowan, Phyllis Louise	1918	Adult Education in England, Educational Psychology	University College, Hull	1946-1947	BW 84/45/2
Malach, Vernon Walter	1921	Economics – the Business Cycle & International Movements	London School of Economics	1946-1947	BW 84/45/3
McKenzie, Robert Trelford	1917	Politics	London School of Economics	1947-1948	BW 84/55/4
Smith, Marjorie Vivien	1916	Child Development	–	1947-1948	BW 84/55/8
Fulton, Anne Caroline	1911	Education	Institute of Education	1947-1948	BW 84/55/3

In his latest blog post, Ken recounts how he discovered the story of Vera Beresford, a war bride from Manchester, England. She had married Arnold Norman Richard Burfield, a Canadian soldier. Arnold was killed in action in Sicily barely a year later, on 23 July 1943.

By examining his military service file, Ken discovered a memo indicating Vera and their son Norman arrived in Canada on voyage W-779 on 6 January 1945.

Voyage W-779? Ken’s source for finding the ship’s name was new to me. Searching for W-779 at https://www.scribd.com/document/431744390/TrainShipSchedules39-45 reveals the ship was the Mauretania.

Searching the ship’s name at Library and Archives Canada and knowing the arrival date reveal that the voyage documents are on unindexed digitized microfilm reel C-5717, available at Canadiana/Heritage. It has one of the lowest file numbers, HQTS 63-303-779-1, of all those on the microfilm, suggesting it’s early on the reel. Ken found Vera and Norman listed in image 200.

This meticulous process highlights the importance of thoroughness and strategic searching.

Vera remarried, moved back to England in 1960, and lived there until her death.

Visiting HMS Victory at Portsmouth was one of the more memorable visits I made with my youngest brother not long before he died. It’s one of six sites of the National Museum of the Royal Navy across the UK.

You can visit online at https://www.nmrn.org.uk/index.php/. Take advantage of the guide sheets for Researching Naval Personnel, Identifying People & Ships and more.

The latest episode (number 8) of The Family History AI Show podcast has two items on using AI for summarization.

1. FamilySearch now has AI-powered summarization in their “Full-Text Search” experiment. This allows researchers to quickly grasp the essence of lengthy documents, saving valuable time and effort.
   I’d previously used the facility at  https://www.familysearch.org/search/full-text with a search for “William H Northwood” to find a document of interest — snippet below.
   What’s new is “Summarize the document.” Here’s what it produced.

William H. Northwood and Amanda Northwood sold various lots in Leavenworth County, Kansas to Frank Friedl on January 9th, 1891, also as a mortgage to secure the payment of $400. The land can be sold if the payment is not made.
William H. Northwood and Amanda Northwood (sellers)
Frank Friedl (buyer).

The summary is accurate, although buried in a summary of other material on the page.

2. Starting at 24:59 in the podcast, Steve Little talks about summarization, which along with extraction, generation and translation, are core things large language models (LLMs) can do. He suggests a basic prompt to any LLM “You are a professional genealogist, summarize this text.” Link the document, or copy it below. It will provide a summary, and a variation of the summary if you do it again. The summary will remove complexity. Be aware the complexity may be important, and LLMs make mistakes. Experiment by selecting a LLM from the resource list below. Try several!

Then follow on in a conversation to get better results:

• Be specific about the type of information you need
• Specify the desired length or key points to include
• Experiment with different prompt structures

There’s more in the podcast .

Resource List
Meta AI: https://meta.ai
OpenAI (ChatGPT): https://openai.com/chatgpt
Anthropic (Claude): https://www.anthropic.com
Google (Gemini): https://gemini.google.com/app
Perplexity: https://www.perplexity.ai/
Microsoft Copilot: https://copilot.microsoft.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com
Apple AI: https://www.apple.com/ai

The collection added 75 new or updated titles in June compared to 101 last month. That includes 8 new titles.

This index provides the name, spouse name, marriage date (year), parish, and a link to the original paper slip image. Here’s Ancestry’s blurb about this collection which now contains 1,697,636 entries.

Pallot’s Index to Marriages is essential for researchers with London ancestry, as it covers all but two of the 103 parishes in the old City of London. The dates span the time from 1780 to the onset of General Registration in 1837. The more than 1.5 million marriage entries come mainly from London and Middlesex, but also include entries from 2500 parishes in 38 counties outside of London-many not available in other sources. Also included are several records from counties in Wales. With indexing begun in 1813, several of the registers transcribed in Pallot’s index no longer exist, having been destroyed or lost in the time since.

The index slips were handwritten on paper, and indexing continued regularly over a period of more than 150 years. Each slip identifies the church or chapel in which the marriage was celebrated, the names of bride and of groom, whether spinster, bachelor, widow or widower and sometimes other detail along with the date of the event.

The original paper slips of the Pallot Index are owned and held at The Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies, Canterbury, England. The Institute may have access to fuller details that may have survived among the original parish records. (www.ihgs.ac.uk) The Institute is a not-for-profit educational organization and researches in the records themselves can be arranged. Please visit their website for additional information about the services they provide.

Artificial intelligence is fomenting a revolution. Are national archives taking advantage?

The National Archives (UK)

has just published its Annual report and accounts 23-24.  I counted ten mentions of artificial intelligence (AI).

The next few years will be pivotal for both new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, and for the archival profession, which is handling ever-increasing amounts of digital records.

we will also be working on a project to explore the potential for using legislation in Artificial Intelligence large language models

There is a two-page case study on Artificial Intelligence
(AI).

In a section on risk

Failure to meet the challenges of digital: There is a risk that The National Archives fails .. (in) moving quickly enough to respond to or benefit from technological change, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI).

National Archives and Records Administration (US)
FY 2025 ANNUAL PERFORMANCE PLAN and
FY 2023 ANNUAL PERFORMANCE REPORT contains a single mention of AI.

NARA’s primary approach to modernizing the FOIA process is to digitize analog records to permit electronic search and processing and to explore, acquire, and apply modern technologies, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), to expedite processing and response.

The National Archives of Australia

Annual Report 2022-23 also contains a single mention of AI.

The Advisory Council noted National Archives must explore opportunities for new ways of undertaking its business to keep pace with technological change, including artificial intelligence and machine learning.
With this comes the need for National Archives to build the required workforce capability and technological infrastructure.

Library and Archives Canada‘s

latest annual report is for 2019–2020. In the more current documents the Departmental Plan 2024-2025, which has a single mention of AI.

LAC will work on topics such as artificial intelligence with academic partners or on genealogy services with companies working in that field.

The Library and Archives Canada: Departmental Results Report (DRR) 2022-2023 makes no mention of AI.

SUMMARY

The significant difference in AI mentions between the UK’s latest report and others reflects the acceleration in AI over just the past year or two.

IMPROVING THE CLIENT’S EXPERIENCE

While there is low-hanging fruit for AI to improve internal operations in archives, will it also be deployed to improve the client experience?

• If you’ve struggled to read handwritten and degraded documents, AI can restore and enhance them making historical texts legible, even if errors are made.
• Finding aids are often deficient. AI can generate detailed metadata for documents, enhancing search capabilities and making it easier to locate specific records.
• AI can provide summaries of large documents, enabling quicker understanding and analysis.

That all requires the original material to be digitized. It was encouraging to read about LAC partnering with the Internet Archive Canada on a digitization initiative. Although that appears to be digitization for publications, together with LAC’s experience with the 1931 census, it should motivate application to archival material.

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. 

Over 3.5 million entries in 29 directories are included in this release. They are:

• Kelly’s Directory of Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire, 1931
• Kelly’s Directory of Bournemouth, Poole, Parkstone, Christchurch &c., 1932
• Kelly’s Directory of Brighton and Hove, 1932
• Kelly’s Directory of Cambridgeshire, 1933
• Kelly’s Directory of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, 1932
• Kelly’s Directory of Devonshire and Cornwall, 1930
• Kelly’s Directory of Dorsetshire, 1931
• Kelly’s Directory of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, 1931
• Kelly’s Directory of Hertfordshire, 1933
• Kelly’s Directory of Ipswich and Neighbourhood, 1930
• Kelly’s Directory of Kent, 1930
• Kelly’s Directory of Kent, 1934
• Kelly’s Directory of Kilburn Willesden, 1933
• Kelly’s Directory of Leicestershire & Rutland, 1932
• Kelly’s Directory of Norfolk and Suffolk, 1933
• Kelly’s Directory of Putney & Roehampton, 1930
• Kelly’s Directory of Somersetshire, Gloucestershire & the City of Bristol, 1931
• Kelly’s Directory of Suffolk, 1933
• Kelly’s Directory of Sussex, Chichester, Selsey and Neighbourhood, 1934
• Kelly’s Directory of the Channel Islands, 1931
• Kelly’s Directory of Warwick, Leamington Spa, Stratford-On-Avon and Kenilworth, 1932
• Kelly’s Directory of Warwickshire, 1932
• Kelly’s Directory of Westmorland, 1934
• Kelly’s Directory of Wiltshire, 1931
• Malta Telephone Directory, 1933
• New Zealand Post Office Directory, 1934
• Nottingham, Leicester and Derby Telephone Directory, 1934
• Nottingham, Lincoln, Peterborough and Districts Telephone Directory, 1933
• Ward’s Directory of Whitley Bay, Tynemouth, North and South Shields, Jarrow, Wallsend, Gosforth, Newcastle-on-Tyne and Adjacent Villages, 1934