U3A Genealogy meeting April 17th 2012

1. Why Genealogy? Wise words.......
One can speculate about the interest shown in genealogy. From nosiness to hobby to serious
specialty, the focus on one's ancestors and their particulars has really caught on. For many it
is clearly entertaining, considering the many genealogical documentaries, such as Who Do
You Think You Are, aired in many languages across the world. Still others see in the research
of one’s roots a form of self-assurance and may feel a kinship with like-minded people when
communicating via forums and other media. Especially in these times of greater flexibility and
mobility as well as the awareness of the rapid passing of time, many wonder about their
origins and values.
Our values come to us through our families. What our forefathers have created has an
immediate impact on our existence. Without our ancestors we would not be where we are
now; as a matter of fact, we would not be here!
This brings us to another point! Going back some centuries, say going back 7 generations,
each one of us would come up with 65,536 ancestors. Going back 17 generations would
amount to 67, 108 864 people in our family tree. According to various views of actual
population size, this addition already would surpass the population of late medieval times.
The fact is, we share ancestors. Somehow, we are all related!
Considering another fact, namely that most people from the 1500 to 1850s lived in rural areas
and had restricted mobility, it would be interesting to find them in their habitat and ascertain
not only dates and places but also living conditions, characteristics, features and traits which
could give clues to historical, social, medical and genetic research. By coming to know our
ancestors, we come to know ourselves.
Why not try your hand at genealogical research? Why not join our Genealogy Group?

2. Welcome
• Welcome
• A short video on the Census
• Blog update
• Welsh Family History Research.. Diary of the
Nosey Genealogist
• Nonconformist Ancestors in England.. From
the Nosey Genealogist
• A look at The Genealogist
• Over to your brick walls

3. Rootsweb Mailing Lists

4. In case you have not heard......
The Sixteenth United States Census, conducted by the
Census Bureau, determined the resident population of the
United States to be 132,164,569, an increase of 7.3 percent
over the 1930 population of 123,202,624 persons. The
census date of record was April 1, 1940. A number of new
questions were asked including where people were 5 years
before, highest educational grade achieved, and information
about wages. This census introduced sampling techniques;
one in 20 people were asked additional questions on the
census form. Other innovations included a field test of the
census in 1939.

5. Local interest
Nearly 700,000 parish records have been
added at findmypast, including more than
400,000 Northamptonshire burials. The
new records also cover Yorkshire, Dorset and
north-west Kent.

6. Life and Death in the 19 Century th
Most family historians will have noticed the relatively short
life expectancy that was part of the everyday experience of
our ancestors. There were many aspects to the twin topics
of mortality and life expectancy, but a couple of facts may
serve to illustrate the situation in days gone by. According to
Professor Michael Anderson, anybody born in England and
Wales in the 1770s had a 12 per cent chance that both their
parents would have died by the time they reached age 25;
broadly speaking, the same situation pertained a century
later. Infant mortality in England and Wales peaked in the
1890s at a tremendously high rate of approximately 150
deaths per 1000 births. These statistics demonstrate that,
for both the adults and children that family historians study,
the world was a dangerous place!

7. Life and Death in the 19 Centuryth
• Taken from an article by Geoff Culshaw
• This article was published in Family Tree
Magazine, August 2009 issue, pp 32-34 (ABM
Publishing)
• http://www.geoffsgenealogy.co.uk/other-articles/

8. Infant mortality
• Most children who died during infancy were given names, but during the 19th
century just over 1% of births in England & Wales were registered simply as male
or female - if you search the birth indexes at findmypast you'll see them listed at
the end of the Search results. As 6 weeks were allowed for the registration of a
birth it seems a reasonable assumption that they were babies who died in their
first few hours or days of life.
• Rather more than half are recorded as male, which reflects the higher infant
mortality amongst boys, and you might expect that for every birth entry there
would be a corresponding death entry (and vice versa), but that didn't seem to
always be the case in the samples I checked, especially in the first few years of
civil registration.
• This apparent discrepancy may have been the result of confusion about still-
births: until 1927 still-births were not registered - the entries in the birth and
death indexes should all relate to live births. Even now there is no publicly
available index of still-births, and normally only the father or mother of the child
can apply for a copy of the certificate, though if they are both deceased brothers
and sisters are also entitled to apply.

9. Welsh Family History Research
• I’ve been lost in the north of Wales this week doing a bit of family
history. Well not physically…I’ve been seeing how much I could do
remotely, with only the resources that are at my disposal online.
• I started with the 1911 census collections on TheGenealogist.co.uk,
ancestry.co.uk and findmypast.co.uk. As I have written before in this
blog, I often use more than one subscription site to look up ancestors
because the search engines on theses sites rely on their own
transcriptions, created by volunteer transcribers and very often a
mistake in the transcription can mean that your search misses the entry
for your ancestor. By using more than one look-up site I can often find
the missing census entry from one by looking on another. This strategy
paid dividends this week with the Welsh research as Welsh names of
parishes very often seem to have variations in spelling and I assume that
some of the transcribers were not local and so were mystified by what
they were reading from the images.

10. Welsh Family History Research
• I used the old trick of putting the parish name into Google, which I had
open in another browser window while my subscription sites occupied
their own windows. Often I was able to find a handy article that
revealed the different ways of spelling a parish, along with the name of
the old county that it was part of. To deal with the mis-transcriptions I
had to use my common sense to match the spelling offered with the
most likely parish that I could find in the county in question.
• One of the brick walls that I ran up against, with this welsh family, was
that they had a very common set of names for their children, in the
particular counties that I was searching within. So as not to waste time I
had to tackle the problem by approaching from a different angle and
using a different data set.

11. Welsh Family History Research
• On TheGenealogist.co.uk site I was also able to search their
nonconformist records, also available at www.bmdregister.co.uk and
was thus able to download an image that pertained to a baptism in the
parish of Myfod, Montgomeryshire. Further research revealed that it
was also known as Miefod and soon I found the correct entry in the
census collection for the character that I was following.
• I was also able to make use of the Hugh Wallis site that allows a
researcher to search within the batch numbers on the familysearch.org
website. With the aid of his useful tool, that is once more functioning
after a period of not following the revamp of the LDS’ familysearch site, I
was able to look for those with a particular first and surname baptised in
a particular Methodist Chapel.

12. Welsh Family History Research
• One last brick wall, that I discovered while doing this research in Wales,
is that the further back in time that I went I came up against the custom
of parent’s giving their offspring Patronymic surnames. This is where a
child took the father’s first name as a surname. I found out that this
practice, while no longer being held to in the towns and among the
wealthier, still continued up until the early 19th century in some of the
rural areas of Wales.
• By the end of my time on this quest I had put a reasonable amount of
branches on to this particular Welsh Family Tree but the conclusion that
I reached is that it really would benefit from a visit to the County Record
Offices in question in order to see the physical records for the various
churches and chapels in the area. Not everything is online but it is a jolly
good place to start!

13. NonConformist ancestors in
England
• Like me you may have gone back up the branches of your English Family
Tree to find that some of your ancestors became nonconformists, that is
they didn’t worship in the Established Church of England or have their
children baptised within it and when it came to being buried they chose
to have a ceremony conducted in a different Christian tradition.
• This week I have been using the resources of
TheGenealogist.co.uk’s BMD Registers to look at images taken from RG4
at the National Archives. These are registers (authenticated by the Non-
Parochial Registers Commissioners) of births, baptisms, deaths, burials
and marriages. They cover the period from 1567 to 1858. To find out
more about them have a look on TNA’s website, but suffice to say that I
have been able to use them effectively to fill in gaps when my forebears
didn’t appear in the C of E parish registers.

14. NonConformist ancestors in
England
• One way of being alerted to possible non-conformity in a line is where
you can only find your ancestor’s marriage in the Parish church. From
1754, and the introduction of Lord Hadwicke’s Marriage Act, most of the
people of England & Wales were required to marry in the Church of
England. For this reason you may discover that your ancestor’s wedding
is in the parish church’s registers, but theirs and their children’s
baptisms and burials are not. If this is the case then you should make a
search of the non-conformist’s records for the area.
• A difficulty can often arise when the chapel in question did not have its
own register. This could occur when the chapel was served by an
itinerant minister, responsible for a circuit of chapels in the area. In this
case you would need to try and find out the name of the minister and
the other chapels in his care.

15. NonConformist ancestors in
England
• Most of the surviving Congregationalist registers up to 1837, and some
for the Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians and Unitarians were
surrendered to the government in 1840 or 1857. These are now held at
The National Archives in mircofilm series RG 4, 5, & 8, and it was the
first of those that I had been looking at onTheGenealogist.co.uk site.
• I have written a short book, How to Search for Your English & Welsh
Family History, that is available as a Kindle download from
Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com, in which I delve further into the subject
of nonconformist, in chapter 10.

16. The Genealogist
The Genealogist.co.uk is a UK based site, which offers
access to a wide range of source materials that are
ideal for users who wish to research their family
history using only records from British and Irish
archives., TheGenealogist.co.uk is highly regarded by
industry experts, being voted the best Census and
Births, Marriages and Death record site for 2008 by
Family History Monthly. We were very impressed by
the vast range of resources available, and the user
testimonials that can be found across the Internet
paint a great picture of outstanding customer service
and a high level of customer satisfaction.

17. What they say.....
• www.TheGenealogist.co.uk
• Vast online research site.
• Complete birth, marriage and death records index from
1837
• Census indexes and transcripts 1841 to 1901
• Widest coverage: 1215 to 2005
• Quality data, checked by experts
• The widest range of records
• Unique search tools
• Parish records
• Directories
• Landowner records

18. The Genealogist
TheGenealogist.co.uk, as well as offering access
to a range of traditional resources, such as Birth,
Marriage and Death Records, Census
information and the Electoral Roll, also provides
access to a range of more unusual resources
which users will no doubt find useful. One such
resource is the Knights of England resource,
which allows users to trace their ancestors who
have been knighted through records dating back
to 1127. This is an extremely specialist collection
which does not exist in many online locations

19. The Genealogist
There is also a large collection of Parish and
Non-conformist collections, as well as one of
the most extensive collections of British
Overseas records, including the military
honour roll and war death listings from all
major conflicts up until 2005. Users can also
access surname distribution maps which
digitally display a breakdown of where your
family name features most in the UK.

20. The Genealogist
As well as an extremely extensive collection of
resources, it has a real community feel, giving
users access to a range of additional features
which make the site loads of fun to be a part of.
Users can read articles written by industry
experts on a range of genealogical topics, and
check out the news listed on the site each day
regarding celebrity genealogical history and
family trees. There's also The Genealogist
Magazine which is published online every
month, and offers users the opportunity to
share in the success stories of other users.

21. The Genealogist announces its
marriage finder tool
• The Genealogist has announced a great-looking new tool that
enables you to search the 1911 Census for marriages then
match results to its GRO records.
• Using its SmartSearch technology, the new Marriage Finder
Tool links results from the 1911 Census to the more detailed
records available through transcripts and marriage details
found in The Genealogoist’s GRO records. The 1911 Census
didn’t records a spouse’s name, but using the Marriage Finder
Tool you can now find out much more detail about a
marriage.

22. Starter
The Starter subscription gives you credit-free
access to BMD's (GRO Indexes England and
Wales 1837-2005), Overseas BMD's, Census
(1841-1901), Roll of Honour records,
Reference Books and TreeView Premium
Features from£14.95, perfect for beginners
with everything you need to start your
Family Tree

23. Gold Premium / Personal Plus
• Gold Premium and Personal Plus
subscriptions give you access to Census
(1841-1901), BMD’s, Non-Conformist
Records, Wills, Poll Books, Directories, School
Registers, Military, Landowner records and
more.
• The credit based 'Personal Plus' subscription
is £55.95 annually.
• Gold Premium is £78.95 annually

24. Diamond Premium
The Diamond subscription provides access to all
of the records available in the Gold plus new
census releases, overseas records for India,
Australia, New Zealand, America and South
Africa, more extensive collections of records
for Scotland and Ireland. Early telephone
directories, pedigree/heraldry and electoral
registers are available, and also occupational
records, including law lists, medical, clergy,
teachers, actors. £149.45 annually

25. Diamond Package
• http://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/researchguide/?

26. How good is it?

27. A critical comment