If all the Devon baptisms were on FMP!

Recently on the Rootsweb list there was discussion about the availability of Devon, England parish registers online. Several people offered suggestions about where information might be found. Some lamented on the fact that there was no one site where they could go to see all the records. All the comments about and leading up to this subject can be found in the DEVON-L Archives for September.

By the way, these kinds of lists are great for continuing discussions on various subjects, in particular specific families and research techniques. I know many people are moving to social media outlets such as Facebook but I find the Rootsweb and other similar discussion forums valuable because each message is delivered right to my inbox. And I can choose which area, subject or even names I want to connect with on different lists.

Of particular note, though, was the response from Terry Leaman, the Chairman of the Devon Family History Society (DFHS), who commented about what was available on the Society’s website for members and the great work that has been done by volunteers over many decades to make data accessible for researchers.

I thought Terry’s comments were worth reproducing here. I have benefited from having information transcribed by DFHS members. I have also done a lot of transcribing of parish registers and censuses in the Devon region and know about the time it takes to go through the hundreds of pages of records and decipher hard-to-read entries.

Because I do not live anywhere near Devon, I really appreciate the work that DFHS members have done over the years, especially the locals some of whom I know have spent countless hours in the archives offices. Membership in the DFHS is one I find of great value and will definitely keep.

Terry’s comments:

What people need to understand is that, whilst it is a legal requirement for parish registers to be housed in a suitable storage facility, it is not a requirement to put them online. Many of the indexes/transcriptions on FindMyPast (FMP) that are not linked to images came from the Devon Family History Society and are the work of volunteers over a forty year period.

Family History Societies were some of the first organisations to start indexing registers that were not permitted to be filmed by the LDS. Most of the IGI for Devon at that time was the result of filming published books by the likes of the Devon & Cornwall Record Society.

The DFHS continues to index data not available online at this time. This includes the 52 parishes for which the images are in the members' only area of the Society website. The LDS were refused permission to film these but Devon FHS were allowed to. There are two parishes where permission has been totally refused to digitise the registers.

DFHS volunteers are also working on the Methodist registers in both North Devon and Exeter record offices, as well as a number of civil cemeteries- Torquay & Ford Park Cemeteries are already on FMP thanks to DFHS volunteers.

It is a major concern that Family History Societies are losing members because of online resources, Family History Societies (out of public view) constantly liaise with Record Offices or in the case of Devon and Somerset with the South West Heritage Trust, to ensure that family history is not forgotten,   BUT if they don't survive who will step forward to fill the gap? Who will continue indexing those obscure records that would not otherwise be done- see the Devon Social records on FMP.

As to transcription errors, if you could see some of the atrocious writing that is encountered you would understand why errors happen. One register we've encountered recently looks like the writing is upside down and back to front- IT IS honestly that bad. It is easy IF you are looking for a specific name in a parish. It's a lot easier to read something if you know what it should say.

Terry was describing the efforts and trials of the Devon society but his comments probably equally apply to every other family history society.

If you are using and getting a lot out of transcriptions perhaps you might think about volunteering to do some of that work. You do not have to live close to where the societies are to help.

Natural Disasters and Family Misfortunes 7: Disease

One may not always equate disease with natural disasters, other examples being earthquakes or hurricanes, but they are part of the history of people and communities and they are a product of nature, in these cases a most virulent kind that does not involve the destruction of property.

The world does not see epidemics of the scope that existed before the discovery of vaccines or development of modern hygiene practices. But even into the 20^th century, in many regions where our ancestors lived, communities were often attacked by diseases. If you want to count the types and numbers of epidemics that we know about just in recorded history, there is a list on Wikipedia (List of Epidemics).

Very commonly in past centuries, smallpox, cholera, influenza and plague killed thousands of people, sometimes millions, before they were checked or ran out of steam. Today most are confined to less-well developed regions of the world, where living conditions are poor and good hygiene virtually non-existent. In developed countries we have learned how to control or eradicate most of them through maintaining ourselves in better health and with inoculations. We still see small pockets of sicknesses we thought we had rid ourselves of in areas where people have determined they do not need vaccines, but thankfully they are small in number.

Family historians will undoubtedly come across examples in their own families where ancestors contracted and even died of diseases we don’t hear much about any more. I wrote about the Scourge of Phthisis (Tuberculosis) in 2015 and how it had killed great-grandmothers of my wife and me. I have come across references to this particular malady in many records.

I know that the main community in which my Shepheard ancestors lived – Cornwood, Devon, England – according to the church burial register, was visited by cholera, measles, typhus, smallpox and whooping cough. These were recorded only by two incumbents in two periods between 1770-1772 and 1799-1823. We do not have causes of death in church records for the other years between 1685 and 1993 but can reasonably surmise that, at least in the early centuries, disease was also a factor in the deaths of residents. A high proportion of the deaths in this area, prior to the 20^th century, were children and infants as I described in a post title Trends in Ages of Death in Cornwood Parish, Devon in 2015.

One of the last major epidemics in modern times was the Spanish Flu in 1918-20. Estimates put the death toll between 75 million world-wide. Not since the Plague of Justinian in 541-545 (25-50 million, 40% of population) or the Black Death in 1346-50 (75-200 million, 30-60% of population), has the number been so high. Hundreds of thousands more died during the Great Plague of the 1660s. Early European explorers brought diseases with them to foreign shores, unleashing devastating results to indigenes populations, completely eradicating many communities. While this was not strictly caused by only natural conditions, the result was the same.

Not all death or burial records indicate what the causes of death were. In the case of many people, especially children dying within a short period it may be useful too look at whether disease was the reason. Information about those events may be found in newspapers or other historical publications.

Disease, particularly when widespread is no less a disaster than an earthquake or hurricane. While not caused by geologic or atmospheric processes it is still a part of nature.

Organizing and Storing Your Family History Data – My Thoughts

A friend of mine, actually an uncle of my grandsons, has recently been the recipient of his aunt’s voluminous family history files and is now going through the process of organizing and storing them. His Aunt Marion worked for decades assembling information about their family, storing most of it on paper, though. She was never really efficient or familiar with computers and genealogy programs. So Sandy’s task of preserving the data is immense.

He has asked how I keep my files and what programs I use as he is aware of the years I have put into finding family information. He does access my family data on our personal website which uses The Next Generation software – which I do heartily recommend for people who want to put their material online and accessible to other family members.

Sandy is like many people, using laptops as a primary method of working. I still have a desktop that is in use all day, every day, with two large monitors so that I can open several files and websites at the same time. I also like the ideas of being able to see more of the files I am working at and using a separate keyboard. It’s just the way I work.

Sandy has asked my advice about family history software and computer equipment on a few occasions. I don’t usually write here about how to organize data, as there are so many others who offer such great advice. But I thought I would answer his questions as part of a blog post and share some of my thoughts on organization and preservation of data with other readers. So here are some of Sandy’s questions and comments over the past several weeks along with my replies to him:

Wayne:  I was informed that you have now taken charge of all Marion’s boxes of family files. Over the years she gave me lists and summaries of family information but not copies of actual BMD or other documents. Through my own subscriptions I have downloaded a few documents, mostly censuses. But I have not spent a lot of time with the families.

Sandy: I have huge numbers of BMDs and many other original documents and letters.  Many early photos as well. This family treasure is open to you of course. I will need to email you quite extensively in a few months from now on the best equipment to buy and how best to arrange this material. I figure it will take me several years to input everything, but that is what i am going to do. I look forward to doing the work and am now taking a first look at everything. I have already started to add much data to MyHeritage set up. You have access to this I believe. God knows I have grabbed hundreds of pieces of data from your info online!

Wayne: I am happy to help with any organization suggestions. I was glad to hear that Marion’s vast treasure trove of data was not trashed and that someone like you with an interest in family history took it all over. Yes I do have access to your family tree on MyHeritage but have to confess I have spent practically no time looking at it. Just did so and discovered so many photos of your ancestors as a start. Wonderful! It does look like you have a great beginning with your family tree on MyHeritage.

In terms of sharing documents and files, we might set up a Dropbox where each of us can put copies and take copies. I have done away with a lot of paper files now, except for the originals that have come down through family members. They are, in my mind, the same as antiques and physical memorabilia and need to be kept. Any documents I have found online are stored digitally now, in specific family files, on my computer  – and backed up offsite in the cloud, of course (never forget to do that).

I only have my entire tree on our Shepheard family site – although it needs a bit of updating. I did end up with a copy on MyHeritage years ago because I had stored it with a predecessor company that was taken over by MyHeritage. It is woefully out-of-date but I still get notices of matches regularly through my subscription. Unfortunately many of those matches are wrong or I never hear from other tree-owners when I ask questions or confirm matches.

I do regularly visit Ancestry and have found several relatives on some trees there. I have made a few contacts there with who I have shared information. I also have had (related) people contact me through my blog posts look me up, as well as through the websites I maintain for my Online Parish Clerk volunteer position.

Anyway I am looking forward to learning more about my grandsons’ family through you.

Sandy: I have purchased a MacBook Air. It is quite small, but I do my work on a small table in my bedroom or on my lap in the living room on my Lazyboy.  I also have an apple iPad and will probably buy an iPhone as well. Apple does not seem to like sharing with android, so, I will go all Mac.

Wayne: Good luck with your organization of all the new data. There are some genealogical programs suitable for Mac users of course if you want to keep your data on your own machine where, incidentally and most importantly, it can be backed up to one of the cloud servers. If you are not already connected to something like Carbonite or one of the others then I very strongly recommend it. I have had a computer crash before and lost hundreds of files and emails I had saved, including my latest family history summary. I do not want to go through that again, especially with all the data and photos I have stored digitally. My daughter has us set up on Carbonite which automatically scans our computers and updates regularly. I am copying this email to her in case you want to consult with her about the technology.

I do recommend that you scan all documents and photos and keep them on your own computer or other device and so they can be backed up. The originals should be placed in archival binders, file folders or boxes to preserve them. All my family photos are now in binders for safekeeping and future access. You may have read my blog post on Digitizing Memories a few months ago. All of our immediate family albums have been scanned and I am in the process of uploading them to Google Photos so that our kids and grandkids can see them. I will do the same with the six leather-bound albums of historical photos one of these days. The individual photos in those, though, have been scanned and are on my computer. That is one of the very important things to do with such material so that if anything happens to the paper records (floods, fire, vandalism, etc.) you will still have the memories saved.

Sandy: I have been learning about memory sticks and how to use them.

Wayne: Memory sticks are fine for transferring data from one place or person to another. As with other forms of copying and storage – floppy disks, VHR tapes, CDs, DVDs, etc. – very little is known about how long they will last. I think the common perception is that they won’t last forever and that eventually they will all fail, be replaced or the information on them will become degraded. The safest place I have found to preserve information is on one of the subscriber sites where storage of data is maintained in the cloud but still accessible anytime, anywhere and by anyone you choose.

By the way, whatever method you choose to organize and store information, be sure there is someone who will be able to inherit it or take over management of it when you are gone. Otherwise the information could be lost forever.

Sandy: I think that I will continue with MyHeritage and my experiment with one of the others. I haven’t seriously got a plan yet. I am still reading through the documents which will take the next six months or so.

Wayne: Once your history data is entered into whatever program you use you can throw away the scraps of paper. Again, I keep my families all in separate folders, in an overall Genealogy folder, on my hard drive, so they are easy to find, review and update. As you go back in time the numbers of families increases exponentially, so you need to keep separate files in order to be able to recall and work on the data. I find it easier to do on the computer while I know others still have file cabinets full of paper.

MyHeritage is fine for organizing data (and finding cousins) but it is not a place where everyone can access it if you want to share with family members. Nor are any of the other similar online sites. Copying information, especially photos, is challenging on MyHeritage as one cannot get a very good quality reproduction. Again it is important that you have someone who can take over the site when you are gone. Not all websites or services have a way to assign a beneficiary but most do allow a second contact person or co-manager. A serious problem can occur when a subscriber dies and no one takes over or renews the subscription. In those cases, all data may be deleted.

A separate family history website serves the purpose of sharing data as does a Dropbox folder. The latter is also a good way to store information.

Sandy: Do you secretly desire to write a dialogue or a book on your family? I have no illusions about my talent as a writer, even if I did study literature and history in college. But I see such a cavalcade of historic flow here that it makes me what to organize everything together verbally.

Wayne: I have written a book on my Shepheard ancestors in Devon. It was printed with a soft cover and distributed to those family members who were willing to pay for the cost of printing. It had histories of each generation back to my 8th great-grandparents and contained copies of all BMD, census and other records. I wanted to be able to share what I had learned with the family. I just finished a shorter version for Linda’s paternal ancestors. We have not got beyond her 2nd great-grandparents yet but at least it’s a start. My brother-in-law has done a DNA test, so we hope we can find ancestors further back through other cousins who may have also tested.

As for writing ability, I always tell people anyone can set down their thoughts. If they need help they can always find others to edit or proofread. I wrote about this in another blog post last year, Helpful Hints to Writing Anything.

Readers of this post may have many comments on technology, equipment or methodology. Feel free to share your thoughts.