Keeping Howes - February 2024

[mardler]

Hello folks. Happy new month as I'm working through the last few hours of this year's bonus day.

Our monthly progress
We've added a little over 500 people this month to finish on 211,354 people in our file. With our marriage project, we've now added so many marriage details that we now know the date and place for more than one-third of all marriages in England and Wales (E&W) between 1837 and 1980 for people named House/Howes/Howse, etc. We're now part way through 1917 in our project to add more marriage register details for every marriage in our database. 1915 was apparently the most frequent year for marriage in our file, with close to 500 marriages!

Estimating years of birth
Early in the month, a correspondent write to us asking why his ancestor had an estimated year of birth of 1838 when he was twelve years old in the 1851 census of England. surely his estimated year of birth should have been 1839. Here's what I told him.

In our study, we are trying to enter every detail we can find for every person. That incudes estimating the year of birth every time we learn a person's age, for instance, at marriage or in a census. We do that in a particular way, to maximize the chance of being right.

The 1851 census was taken on the night of 30 Mar 1851. Thomas is recorded as age 12. If that age is correct, he must have been born between 30 Mar 1838 and 29 Mar 1839. So, there's a 75% chance he was born in 1838.

The 1841 census was taken on 6 Jun. Using the same thought process as above, anyone age 2 on 6 Jun would have a 57% chance of being born in 1838.

Our rule, therefore, is, if the census date is on or before 30 Jun in any year (most are, in the USA & Canada as well as the UK) we approximate the year of birth by taking (Census Year - Age - 1). We then add the "circa" because our rule is not perfect.

We use a similar process to predict year of birth from marriage registers, burial records and so on.

An offer from MyHeritage
Many of us have taken a DNA test with Ancestry.com. Ancestry has just announced that in future you will need to have an active subscription to view your DNA test results.

In a reverse move, possibly because of what Ancestry is about to do, MyHeritage has just announced that if you download your DNA test results from Ancestry (or 23 & Me, or other provider) and then upload the results to MyHeritage BEFORE midnight on March 4, they will waive their normal US$29 activation fee AND you will have full access to their analyical tools for life!

This is a great deal, folks. Yes, of course, MyHeritage wants more test data in their files, but in return they are giving you access to their different database of testees with a good likelihood of finding additional cousins at no cost to you and they say they will never charge you for using their tools.

To learn more, go here: https://www.myheritage.com/dna/upload/147840912

RootsTech
Don't forget that RootsTech is taking place online on Friday and Saturday this week, US time. Go to Rootstech.org for details. For the first time in ten years I've decided not to attend. Too many things going on in my life! I know, it's ridiculous for a retiree to say that!

Never mind if you are busy this weekend, as many of the sessions will be available online within a few weeks for the next year at least.


Enjoy March, folks. Let's hope it does indeed "go out like a lamb"!
Paul