Genetic map of Britain

A genetic mapping project at the University of Oxford has shown a surprising degree of clustering in different geographical regions of the UK.

Genetic map of Britain goes on display - University of Oxford:

On the genetic map of Britain, Cornish people clustered separately from those from Devon, while the Scottish and Irish tended to share the same DNA markers. Those in South Wales formed a group, while there were separate clusters in the Welsh borders and in Anglesey in North Wales. People in Orkney were different from everyone else. In England, the majority of the South, South-East and Midlands formed one large group. Cumbria, Northumberland and the Scottish Borders seemed to share a common past. And Lancashire and Yorkshire, despite their rivalry, seemed to be as one genetically.

In the project DNA samples were taken from 4000 people whose four grandparents all came from the same area. so this does not necessarily tell about the entire UK population, but rather about those whose ancestors tended to stay put where they were born.

It would be interesting to see if a sample was taken of people whose great grandparents, or great great grandparents had all come from the same area,  as the genetic variations would probably become clearer still, though it might be more difficult to find a sample as many people do not know the names of all their great grandparents, much less where they were born. I certainly didn't know the names of all mine until I started genealogical research 40 years ago.

Popularity of names

One of the things that can sometimes help genealogists is to know the popularity of names at different periods and in different places. Names can very often date people, sometimes quite precisely.

One of the most spectacular examples in recent times is Nevaeh ("heaven" backwards), which in England and Wales at least has grown spectacularly in popularity for girls, thought not at all among boys.



You can find this, and other information on the popularity of names in England and Wales here Babies called Nevaeh in England & Wales since 1996.

One of the things I find slightly odd about these sites is that they are almost always called "Baby names", but those before 2000 are now teenager names, not baby names.

Another thing to watch out for is the way names change sex. That does not seem to have happened to Nevaeh yet, at least not in the UK, where it seems to be strictly a girl's name.

But when I was growing up, for example, anyone called "eslie was invariably male, and the feminine form of the name was Lesley. More recently, however, I've come across some female Leslies, and some male Lesleys. With some names, like Ashley/Ashleigh, it's impossible to tell.

That's OK when you know the people concerned, but when you are entering the names of relatives you've just discovered into a genealogy program it often wants to know their sex, and sometimes you just don't know.

Trying out Tumblr and Posterous

I've been trying out Tumblr and Posterous.

You've probably never heard of them, but they are quick 'n dirty blog hosting sites that let you share stuff with a minimum of fuss and bother.

If you're toying with the idea of starting a family history blog, but don't want to get into all that computer nerd stuff, one of these may be just what you're looking for.

If you frequently e-mail family and friends to share photos, cartoons, urban legends, family news and photos, then try sending the stuff to Posterous or Tumblr instead. No fuss, no bother, and either of them will turn it into a nicely-formatted blog.

I've started using Tumblr for general stuff, and Posterous for family history stuff, just to see how well they work, and I invite you to have a look and see what you think, and perhaps start one of your own. It's as easy as sending an e-mail. You don't have to be a computer nerd to use them, though from what I can see it is mostly my computer nerd friends that have discovered them.

Anyway, if you'd like to look at mine they are at:

For general stuff there's Marginalia on Tumblr.

For family and family history stuff there's Hayes family updates on Posterous.

though there is quite a bit of overlap as I try them out with some of the same things.

I've noticed a few things.

Posterous handles photos a bit better than Tumblr.

If you e-mail a photo to posterous, it makes the subject line the heading, and the body of the e-mail the body of the post. Just make sure to type #ends where you want the text to end, otherwise it might include all sorts of unnecessary details.

Tumblr handles documents better than Posterous.

I posted a pedigree chart to both, and Posterous handles it via Scribd. It's OK, but the Tumblr one looked better on screen and was easier to read.

But check them out for yourself and make up your own mind.

I don't think either is a complete replacement for "proper" blogging sites like blogspot.com and wordpress.com, because they lack several features of those. For example, neither of them seem to support the widgets (or in Blogger-speak, gadgets) that you'll find in the right margin of this blog, with links to things like MyBlogLog, Webrings and the like. I find those useful for surfing particular kinds of blogs, like genealogy blogs, for example, so I'm not planning to abandon this blog, or my Wordpress one which deals more with our own family.

But for quick-fix family updates and sharing your research discoveries, family news and photos, Tumblr and Posterous are ideal.

Woman given legal rights to remains of long-lost relative discovered on display in university

One of the things about family history is that you never know what you might find. Some of the skeletons in the closet can turn out to be quite literal.

Woman given legal rights to remains of long-lost relative discovered on display in university | The Sun |News:

A SHOCKED wife researching her family tree found she was related to a killer - still hanging from a NOOSE.

Gobsmacked Mary Halliwell was furious to discover the skeleton gruesomely displayed in a university cabinet 189 years on.

She launched a battle to be declared legal owner of the remains - and won.

Tombstone Tuesday: Isle of Axholme

A few years ago we travelled to the UK and visited churches in villages where ancestors lived, and in some places found family tombstones.

One of the places we visited was Crowle, in the Isle of Axholme, Lincolnshire, where my Vause family came from. We couldn't find any Vause tombstones in the churchyard, though there were a couple for the Bunyee family, and some members of the Vause family married Brunyees.

So we took some photos of Brunyee tombstones, but many of them were illegible, and most of the names didn't seem to connect with those in our family tree.



But for family history researchers with family members in the Isle of Axholme, Christmas has come early, as the Axholme Ancestry web site has just made 7000 tombstone photos available, and you can search them.

Bagot family forum

In the past few weeks I've had quite a lot of correspondence with people researching the Bagot family, and we've had a fruitful exchange of information.

As a result of this, and to facilitate further exchanges, we've set up a Bagot family forum on YahooGroups, and invite other Bagot researchers to join us there. The forum is intended mainly for people who are interested in or descended from Bagot families in north Lancashire and surrounding areas. In addition to the usual exchange of messages informing people about new discoveries, there are facilities for file exchange and creation of databases.

There are various spellings of the name. Bagot is the most common, but Bagott, Bagett, Bagat and other variations are quite common.

Connected Histories: Sources for Building British History, 1500-1900 | Institute of Historical Research

This looks as though it will be a useful resource once it gets going.

Connected Histories: Sources for Building British History, 1500-1900 | Institute of Historical Research:

Early modern and nineteenth-century Britain is one of the times and places in history for which the largest number of digital sources is available. These have been created by universities, archives and commercial providers, and are accessed by tens of thousands of individuals each day. But many are under-exploited, and researchers are hampered in the way they use these materials by their distributed nature and the variable forms of tagging and structure present in each resource. Connected Histories provides the next stage in meeting historians’ needs by addressing the requirement to access historical resources in a single, consistent way; and in a manner that moves beyond simple keyword searching to a forensic and semantically-driven approach.

The article goes on to say

Using metadata and other available background information, the project will create a search facility that adapts to each resource (depending on whether and how the data is tagged, and on the text structure) to allow searching across the full range of chosen sources for names, places, and dates, as well as keywords and phrases. Background information about the search results will be delivered to the end user, and a facility to save and export search results for further analysis will also be provided. An online collaborative workspace will allow users to document connections between sources. The search facility will be expandable as new digital resources become available.

Benoke family - Allen descendants

June Murphy has just sent me a lot of information on the family of her great grandfather Hooper Scott Benoke, and from it I've been able to to work out that June and I are 5th cousins, and we are both descended from William and Ann Allen of Winscombe, Somerset.

The Allen family seems to have been quite prolific. At various times I've discovered mysterious cousins staying with Hayes relatives in censuses in Bristol, and have gradually been tracking them down, and most have turned out to be Allen descendants. Some of the surnames of descendants are Hayes, Williams, Hill, Purnell, Nipper, Benoke and there are probably many more to be discovered.

Lost cousins

If you have British ancestors, you might find the Lost Cousins website useful.

It's free to join, and what you do is enter any members of your family who appeared on the 1881 census of England, Wales or Scotland. And you can find the census on line, too.

Once you've entered them, the Lost Cousins site attempts to match them with data entered by other members, and if you've entered the same family as someone else, chances are you're related!

And the more people who participate, the more chances you have of finding a lost cousin.

I've entered about 120 blood relatives so far.