WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE

Newsletter, 1st January 2012

It’s 12.30 p.m. GMT on New Year’s Day. The updated and new files are all ready to be launched and I’m ready to be lunched, having had breakfast at 7 a.m. However, I shall start the newsletter, always the nicest of my tasks at the quarterly website update. I hope that all is well with you and your family and wish you as happy a New Year as possible in these challenging times.

Quarterly report

This last quarter I have made a huge effort on the RADAP project, computerising the trees of 29 correspondents, making a total of 52 for the year. There remain just 35 trees, belonging to 38 correspondents, still in the paper files. [Correction, 2nd April 2012: This should have read “37 trees, belonging to 40 correspondents..”] Among the trees completed this quarter is the massive one generated mainly by correspondent 100, but shared by three others. It runs to 23 pages and is the second biggest in my collection. Correspondent 100 (Christopher Whitehouse) is a most assiduous researcher, who has extended his tree collaterally and who deserves particular thanks, because of the extensive referencing of censuses and marriages that he has generated.

The Special Registration Day for Kentucky Whitehouses took place on 9th October, as announced. Four new correspondents (394 and 526-528) were attached to tree 137 etc., making 14 in all. It now runs to 74 pages. Another correspondent (529), with a separate tree, was also registered.

Two researchers have been kind enough to thank me for the Marriage Details file, which can be sorted by the names of the fathers. I have commented in the October newsletter on its coverage. Since then, it has made a modest advance and in this connection I thank correspondent 141, 145 for extracting two marriages for me from the Gloucester Record Office.

The US 1880 Census referencing project has made further progress, 8 states being added. The state of Iowa has joined Indiana and Kentucky in the 1870 file.

A new record launched this quarter is the Dudley cemeteries file covering burials from 1887 to 1960, which can be accessed via the BMD EXPLANATIONS document.

Transcription of the 1911 census has made only slow progress this last quarter. I am a big fan of Findmypast, reckoning that their indexing is a lot better than Ancestry’s. It is sad to report, therefore, that they do commit transcription errors. Two rather bad surname ones were found when referencing the tree of correspondent 100, namely Whitechurch and Whitchner.

During the quarter I reviewed 10 years of progress since 10th October 2001, when I had to stop accepting new registrations, and wrote a paper for the Journal of One-name Studies, which has been published in the Jan-Mar 2012 issue. I have provided a link on the index page of this website.

Keen readers of this website will notice that the “Lost Contact” file has been removed. It has been a big failure, having failed to generate a single response.

Another change just made concerns Registration. I am now in so much better a position that I want to encourage more people to register with the WFHC. I have therefore done away with the Registration document, which some might find off-putting. It has been replaced by a short section in the Index page.

Help wanted

I still hope to get some more help with the 1880 US census. It’s pretty easy work and it’s a shame that no one in the States has volunteered their services.

I have a couple of other projects which would be very suitable for doing at home or on a public computer terminal. One is to extract details of Whitehouses who entered the States via the Castle Garden Center (1855-1890). The other is to carry out a pilot study on extracting Whitehouse information from The London Gazette, which contains fascinating information about bankruptcies, amongst other things. In both cases, the websites are free to access.

A new Family search service

I am grateful to Steven Whitehouse (WFHC 240) for the following:

“Thank you for all you have done to document and research Whitehouse family history. I just wanted to let you know about this website as it is fairly new and largely unknown to the public.

You should know that there are actually two websites provided by the Church, one is a revamped "www.familysearch.org" which you are probably familiar with. The other one is named "new.familysearch.org" and is one that has not yet been publicized to the public in general. It has only just recently been opened to the general public and is quite different than www.familysearch.org.

FamilySearch.org is largely a repository of general unlinked records with an indexed search engine. New.familysearch.org is a website that is a collaborative tree where records are archived and linked together in a format that allows users to share conclusions and to document artefacts. The documentation tools are a work in process and will in the future allow users to actually provide images of sources or links to internet providers of artefact images”.

The General Register Office (England & Wales) indexes

A recent press release advised that the following libraries hold a complete set of GRO indexes including those for more recent events:
Birmingham Central Library
Bridgend (South Wales) Local and Family History Centre
City of Westminster Archives Centre
Manchester City Library
Newcastle City Library
Plymouth Central Library
The British Library

This was interesting news, because the City of Westminster has rather nice archive facilities, down a side street near the Houses of Parliament, which is fairly easy for me to visit.

It took them 35 years to marry

While reviewing correspondent 100’s tree, I discovered that a couple living together at the 1901 census did not marry until 1935. Perhaps they had to wait until the woman’s husband died. This must be a record for a “late” marriage, unless someone out there knows better...

Genealogy tip comes unstuck

One of my tips for those who hit a brick wall is to search for a second marriage of an ancestor whose first marriage preceded civil registration. The purpose of this is to find the name of the father. I applied my own tip to Thomas Whitehouse, a coal merchant in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, who had married for the first time in 1834 and re-married. Unfortunately, he re-married twice and the marriage details gave different fathers !

The bare-knuckle fighter and the famous Whitehouse

Someone asked me not so long ago about a Whitehouse who was a bare-knuckle fighter and I had to reply that I had never heard of such a person. Well, now I have, after computerising Tree 087 306 320. He was Tom Whitehouse, who took the middle forename Salmon, from his grandmother, Jane Whitehouse, née Salmon, and was one of a family of china and earthenware dealers and fruiterers in the town of Warwick. His daughter Beatrice married a black man, by whom she had five children including the famous boxer Randolph (“Randy”) Turpin. Randy enjoyed three months of fame in 1951 when he beat Sugar Ray Robinson to take the world middleweight title. After several business failures, he shot himself and died at the age of 37 in 1966. Randy was legitimate, but my brief investigation showed that his elder brother, Dick, himself a British & Commonwealth middleweight champion boxer, was not. He was born out of wedlock by the 16-year old Beatrice as Lionel C T Whitehouse, a matter on which the on-line biographies that I have read were silent. So, thanks to the practice of giving an illegitimate child the mother’s surname, we have another famous Whitehouse. No doubt the 3rd initial “T” stands for Turpin and “Dick” would be the obvious nickname, after the highwayman. Beatrice was only 17 when she married in 1921.

A mysterious change of name

Tree 087 306 320 has another interesting feature. Rhoda Whitehouse (1855-1924) married Francis Barnes and they and their children are well documented. On the 1901 census the family, unquestionably the same, appears under the surname Dawson. Family lore has it that Francis was a gambler and it is speculated that he changed their name to avoid being pursued for gambling debts.

Did he come down the chimney ?

This quarter’s tailpiece has been contributed by Christopher Whitehouse above-mentioned. Francis Whitehouse, a chimney sweep, died in 1886 at Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, aged 62. The cause of death, per coroner’s inquest, was entered on the death certificate as “Visitation of God”.

Best wishes to all,

Keith

WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE

Newsletter, 6th October 2011

A bad start

The current quarter has got off to a bad start, as I have a serious computer malfunction, in which Windows froze and afterwards refused to open Internet Explorer and several other programs. The problem is not yet resolved, so access to the web and to e-mails is difficult at the moment. It occurred during the preparation of files for the website updating and has distracted me from it, which partly explains its lateness.

Quarterly report

In the last quarter I have been very busy, concentrating on upgrading my indexes of Whitehouse marriages in England & Wales for 1837 Q3 to 1911. The basic index (GRO M 1837-1911 ....) contains 8913 lines of entry and after 33 duplicates and deletions are removed, there are 8800 marriages. I am very pleased to report that the WFHC now has the full details of 6692, which is 76 percent. A further 14 marriages have partial details, including father’s name, date and place, while another 5 have a smaller amount of detail. A big problem over the years has been the lack of cross-referencing in the General Register Office (GRO) index, so I am further delighted to say that the number of Whitehouse marriages with the spouse’s name added has reached 7920, which is 90 percent. This total includes 1209 marriages with no detail, but with the spouse’s name and, among these, 149 also have an exact date. All these statistics count the 59 known Whitehouse-Whitehouse marriages twice.

Apart from the increases in numbers, I have made a major change to the Marriage Details indexes, by combining those for the West Midlands, London area and all other places into a single file. The combined file is called “M Details ...” and is massive, weighing in at 3.85 MB, 13926 lines of entry and printable to 262 pages of landscape A4. A thorough reconciliation of the GRO M 1837-1911 ... and M Details ... files has been carried out, so that all marriages designated “f” (full details), “p” (partial details that include the father’s name, where given) and “s” (some extra information, but less than the partial category) in GRO M 1837-1911 ... can be found in the M Details file. It is best to use the Universal Number (UN) to locate the details. I remind everyone that a big strength of the M Details file is the ability to sort by the fathers’ surnames and forenames.

I am greatly indebted to Ian Preece (Guild of One-Name Studies) for extracting some 75 or so Whitehouse marriages in Stourbridge Registration District and I thank also Christopher Whitehouse (WFHC 100) for contributing 20 certificates, some of which relate to marriages in non-Anglican churches. I particularly liked the “Reformed Episcopalian Church of England” in Warrington, which was new to me.

The GRO (England & Wales) births and deaths indexes have undergone some “cosmetic” changes and, as the information contained in them is the same, I have not re-dated them.

It is hardly surprising to report that less progress has been made elsewhere with the records, but I thank Jayne Sandles (WFHC 441), yet again, for her work on the 1911 census of Essex, which has kept this project going forward.

The trees of 6 more correspondents have been computerised, mostly after extensive work on my part to include collateral lines. Three new correspondents have been registered (WFHC references 282, 324, 376, these being vacated old numbers).

Postal addresses

From time to time, I have been asked why I want a postal address in order to register someone. Postal addresses continue to be an important means for me of identifying people. E-mail addresses change and few people think to tell me. In order to get in touch, I try their telephone number. If that fails, I use the postal address to verify the telephone number or lack of one. After that, I try “Google”. If all that fails, I write to them at their last known postal address. If I receive no reply, I enter them in the register as "lost contact".

The provision of a postal address also means that the correspondent is not "anonymous". This is an important safeguard which encourages the provision of accurate family information, since there is a definite means of contacting him or her.

There’s also the issue of whether he or she can access records easily. Sometimes, I am able to help by finding particular entries in parish registers using resources in London.

Lost in translation

While I was in the Family History Centre in August, a fellow researcher was asking about some curious entries in the Hexham baptism register of 1734. The register appeared to give the names of godparents, preceded by the word “lost” or “lest”. A Latin abbreviation ? A local name for a surety ? In the baptism service, the godparents stand as sureties for the child, but the service contains no word “lest”. Suggestions welcome: here is a sample page: Hexham PR 1734.pdf

No sh*t !

It took me a long time to find the family of Edward Whitehouse, a 54-year old iron-worker, on the 1891 census. Ancestry had indexed the surname as Shitcharce.

Best wishes to all,

Keith

WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE

Newsletter, 2nd July 2011

Ever more thanks

I remain deeply grateful to all of you who make time to help me create these Whitehouse records. By doing so, you have put something back into the genealogical community, particularly in the West Midlands, where the Whitehouse name is so frequent.

Again, I must start with Brian Morris (WFHC 518), who has contributed greatly to Cannock Registration District marriages, bringing this part of the West Midlands Marriage Details Project to completion. His contribution has been immense. Another thankee is Jenny Taylor (WFHC 501) who visited Bushbury St Mary to extract a 1908 marriage from a register which is kept at the church and has also filled in gaps in the details of three other marriages. Mike Caladine (WFHC 510) has kindly sent me some CDs that he no longer requires and I shall be using these as the basis for building some new databases of parish register extracts. Another contribution arrived in the form of an article from “Staffordshire Newsletter” referring to the Jabez and Josiah James Whitehouse families of builders. I am grateful to David Whitehouse (WFHC 524), a descendant, for this. Dave Whitehouse (WFHC 512) has done a tremendous job in putting the 1880 census of New Hampshire onto Excel: New Hampshire is the second largest US state for Whitehouses.

A classic exercise in genealogy

New correspondent 523 has been connected to existing Tree 016 405, which is the Birmingham Cab Proprietors tree. Making the connection has been a “classic” exercise, involving the following features:

(a) no baptism found for 523’s ancestor, Elizabeth Whitehouse, yet her siblings were all baptised (in a different parish)

(b) valuable clues obtained from witnesses in the Handsworth St Mary marriage registers (transcribed and put on this website)

(c) comparison of signatures in the original marriage registers (witness in one marriage and the party marrying in another)

(d) one of 523’s children was baptised in a Methodist chapel, which at that time (1835) recorded the names of the mother’s parents

(e) extensively repeated, less common, forenames, Abraham, Cornelius and Ruth, in many branches of the large tree, down the generations

(f) first cousins marrying other parties in two adjacently entered marriages on the same day and at the same church

(g) addresses given at baptisms showing that the family moved from one parish to another

(h) two married sisters having their children baptised on the same day and at a different parish from the one in which they lived

(i) two Whitehouses proved to be brothers by Letters of Administration taken out when one died

The connection, a joint operation between me and 523, had an important result for the original correspondents 016 and 405, as the Methodist baptism provided much stronger proof of their ancestry than had been obtained previously. It all adds up to this: firstly, always pursue the collateral lines, that is to say the siblings of those in your direct line, working backwards if possible, but forwards in time as well and secondly, make sure that you keep your e-address up to date, as correspondents 016 and 405 did.

He married his first wife’s niece

One aspect of the tree of the Birmingham metal rollers (012 etc) relates to Thomas Whitehouse born in 1812 and his brother, James Whitehouse, the pistol finisher born in 1814. When I reached WFHC correspondent 297 in the ongoing digitisation programme, a remarkable story emerged. Briefly, Thomas Whitehouse separated from his wife Ann, nee Abley, or maybe she died, in the early 1850s, after the 1851 census. He took up with Cecelia Ann Potter and they had or acquired two children (the first might not have been his) and they sailed to Melbourne and on to Hobart in 1861. At some point, they returned to England and appear on the 1871 census, but emigrated to the US in 1873, where they appear on the 1880 US census. They died shortly afterwards, but their son Arthur continued the line. Cecelia Ann Potter was the daughter of Hannah Maria Abley, the elder sister of the above-mentioned Ann Abley. In other words, Thomas Whitehouse "married" his first wife's niece.

That is not all. Information from New Zealand via correspondent 297 has revealed that a Catherine Whitehouse aged 2 on the 1841 census and 12 on the 1851 census, with her grandfather Thomas and uncle Thomas, was James’ daughter. She sailed with the Whitehouse and Potter families in 1861. In about 1865, Albert Potter, a brother of Cecelia Ann Potter, deserted his Tasmanian wife and took Catherine with him to New Zealand. Albert had a controversial life in which he turned his hand to many trades.

Progress report

There have been some big leaps forward in the records this quarter.

The Marriage Details project has made further progress. It is now complete for all Anglican churches in Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire, in the period 1st July 1837-1911, except for 6 marriages in Coventry and Foleshill, the Stourbridge RD marriages being extracted by my Guild of One-name Studies colleague Ian Preece, three marriages at Rocester (near Uttoxeter, North Staffs), 12 marriages at Darlaston All Saints, for which the church registers have been destroyed and 4 marriages at Walsall St Matthew in 1838-39, where the only registers currently available are Bishop’s Transcripts in the old style.

The 1911 census transcription has advanced from 4174 to 6639 lines.

There was a glitch in the previous 1880 US census file, in which some entries for New York were duplicated or triplicated, thus somewhat obscuring the effect of the addition of New Hampshire, which, however, has given a huge boost to overall coverage.

Three new correspondents have been registered this quarter (WFHC 523 to 525) and the trees of 11 existing ones digitised. I have been tackling the remnants of my bundle of papers relating to correspondents with only a peripheral interest in a Whitehouse. Four were removed from the register, because their connection was too flimsy.

The WFHC & money

The Whitehouse Family History Centre has always been a charitable type of venture. My services have always been given freely and there is no intention to make any charges. Since the WFHC has no income, it makes no profit: indeed, it runs at a loss, since I have had to make many trips from my home 12 miles south of London up to the West Midlands and have spent on the occasional marriage certificate to plug a hole in WFHC records. My collection of wills and administrations has been another significant loss-making element, as many were obtained by post from the various diocesan archives. Minor expenditure is incurred when I lose track of a correspondent because an e-mail bounces and I cannot find a ‘phone number In these circumstances, I send a letter asking him or her to get in touch with me.

Try transcribing this

In the 1911 census of Wigan Registration District, there is an Elyben Whitehouse aged 3, born in Wigan. “Elyben” is what it looks like and is the transcription made by FindMyPast. There is probably no such forename and certainly no birth registration in that name. The solution to this conundrum became evident only after sorting the WFHC’s GRO B 1837-1911 database by Registration District. The top part of the letter “b” in “Elyben” can be read as a flourish upstroke of the “y”, whereupon “Elyben” looks more like “Elyven”, an attempt at Evelyn, whose birth is indeed registered in Wigan Registration District in 1908 !

Best wishes to all,

Keith

WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE

Newsletter, 6th April 2011

Still more thanks

I am so very grateful to those who volunteer some help. Just small amounts can save me heaps of time, which can then be devoted to completing other records tasks. Quite apart from the practical value, it raises my morale.

I must start with Brian Morris (WFHC 518), who has made a big contribution to Cannock Registration District marriages. Also contributing significantly to this project was Jill Beckett (WFHC 490), who extracted 32 Cannock and Hednesford ones for me. Cannock RD includes the villages of Cheslyn Hay and Great Wyrley, where the name Whitehouse was, and maybe still is, as frequent as Smith and Jones. Brian Morris has also been working on the Potteries RDs of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Stoke-upon-Trent and Wolstanton Registration Districts. His support for the marriage details project has therefore been massive.

The last of the Anglican marriages missing from the Wolverhampton file have been copied by Sylvia Peers, a fellow-member of the Birmingham & Midland Society for Genealogy & Heraldry (BMSGH). Joan Morganti (WFHC 496), who has already provided great assistance, has extracted the details of non-Anglican marriages in Wolverhampton and, even more valuably, has visited Hatherton St Saviour (Cannock RD) to extract marriages from a register held by the church.

My progress with Walsall area marriages has been limited by the non-availability in London of most of the registers of the old parish church of St Matthew during the 1837Q3 to 1911 period, so I was very glad of the help provided by Laraine Preece (WFHC 420).

Rural Warwickshire has been problematic, because of the large number of country churches, but I have been helped by several people making small but highly valued contributions. Thus, Barbara Biddle (BMSGH), kindly went to the Leicestershire Record Office for me to check on some of the marriages in Atherstone Registration District. Atherstone is in the east of Warwickshire close to the county boundary, so its RD covers parts of Leicestershire. Jayne Sandles (WFHC 441) helped with a marriage at Polesworth. In Stratford RD, I was rescued by the Warwickshire Record Office who looked up a wedding that I managed to pinpoint to Wellesbourne. The problems in Nuneaton RD were a little more complicated, but I was fortunate to get highly competent assistance from Mark Thursfield, who, like me, is a member of the Guild of One-Name Studies.

The Worcestershire village of Inkberrow falls within Alcester RD, a Warwickshire Registration District, and here I was helped by another contribution from Netta Hughes (WFHC 172), who also tidied up some “loose ends” in Droitwich RD and the City of Worcester. The parish of Quinton is a mere 5 miles from the centre of Birmingham, but, quirkily, formed part of Stourbridge RD, having been split off from Halesowen parish. Although I had previously extracted the Whitehouse marriages there, checking of my database revealed one more, so I was grateful to David Fall, another member of the Guild of One-Name Studies for help with that at the Birmingham Library. I did some work for him in return. Also, Lindsey Crompton (WFHC 237) checked some details for me in the Birmingham Library.

Ian Preece (Guild of One-Name Studies) has been another tower of strength, extracting four marriages in rural Worcestershire, suggesting where to find another one and helping in other ways. Sonja Smith (BMSGH) very kindly found a marriage at the village of Brimfield (Herefordshire) in the Worcestershire Registration District of Tenbury and helped with some other Herefordshire marriages as well.

Jayne Sandles, above, is also responsible for giving the 1911 census programme a boost, when she transcribed Northamptonshire, so many thanks to her. She has just finished Leicestershire as well and that will be added shortly. Sue Hendrie, a new correspondent (WFHC 522), has kindly helped with me a query on the 1911 census in relation to another tree.

Last, but not least, comes Dave Whitehouse (WFHC 512), who has transcribed Whitehouses from the 1880 US census of Massachusetts.

I just hope that I have not left anyone out.

Progress report

During this quarter, I have welcomed three new correspondents, WFHC 520 to 522, and have digitised the trees of 6 existing correspondents.

Last quarter’s newsletter announced an all-out attack on marriage details. “Marriage details” means all the essential details that are seen on a marriage certificate. Progress has been truly staggering. I have been working on films in London and making several visits to the Stafford Record Office. On one of them, I met Brian Morris (above), who has made such a big contribution. Others have played useful parts, too. The result of all this activity is that I am cautiously optimistic of completing the marriage details of all Whitehouses who married in Anglican churches in Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Staffordshire and for which the church registers are in existence. There is still some way to go, but this target should be achievable by the end of the year. With this goal firmly in mind, I have amalgamated all the marriage details files that are complete or nearly complete for all Anglican churches in these counties and created a massive M Det W MIDS RDs file, which currently weighs in at over 3MB and covers 5556 marriages in total, including full details for over 4900. It’s been quite a problem with the frequent name of Whitehouse that the databases are large. As broadband usage and computing power have grown, I have gradually combined databases so as to create bigger ones that offer better searching possibilities.

In the last newsletter, I introduced a new noun into the English language: thankee - a person who is thanked. This quarter, it’s a new verb: to deglitch. The big M Det W MIDS RDs file needed a lot of deglitching. It was a bit worrying when I found that more men had married than women. The explanation was not polygamy, but a glitch in which I had entered two women as men. There were many others. I don’t suppose that I have removed them all, so if you find something inconsistent or even downright wrong, please take the trouble to let me know.

Towards the end of last year I was frustrated in wanting to extract 11 Whitehouse marriages at Wolverhampton at All Saints and St George. The All Saints marriage registers were not at the Staffordshire Record Office and had been thought by the SRO to have been destroyed in a fire there in 1984. Upon enquiry, I learned that the vicar had found the registers last October, when a safe was forced open and was going to send them to the local Registrar. This was entirely the wrong place, as the Registrar already had one set of the registers. Anyhow, I persuaded the vicar to deposit them at the SRO. For St George, there was just the one missing register, covering 1865-1871, and here also I intervened, with the result that the Wolverhampton Registrar made a copy, which has been placed in the Wolverhampton Archives. This had the excellent result that the Archives will be able to plug a hole in their index of marriages up to 1875. Wolverhampton is now complete for all Anglican churches, but there remains a Roman Catholic marriage to be extracted. It has been really pleasing that the rather narrow pursuit of Whitehouse genealogy has resulted in this broader benefit to those with Wolverhampton ancestors.

Work is in progress on the remaining 6 registration districts - the Potteries ones, Stourbridge (where I am awaiting results from a fellow member of the Guild of One-name Studies), Stafford and Walsall. In Walsall RD, I have encountered several major obstacles to progress. The biggest of them concerns Darlaston All Saints church, which was flattened in a ww2 bombing raid, resulting in destruction of its registers. I have asked the Walsall Registrar to copy the ones that run from the consecration of the church in the late 1800s up to 1911. Initially I met with a refusal on legal grounds, which is rather surprising, considering that the Wolverhampton Registrar copied a register. However, I hope that she will change her mind, as there are 13 Whitehouse marriages at this church to be either extracted or checked. Another impediment arose at Walsall St Matthew. It looks as though this church did not keep duplicate registers in its earliest years after civil registration began, as only Bishop’s Transcripts, written in the old style of marriage book, are available. This has resulted in my being unable to get full information for 4 Whitehouse marriages there.

The Walsall problems have set me onto looking at the 1949 Marriage Act, which is still the basic legislation under which the present system of obtaining certificates from a local registrar or from the General Register Office operates, but I think I’ll defer sharing with you my ruminations until later this year, as this newsletter is already running late.

Progress has been made on other fronts. In particular, the 1911 census has advanced. I have completed Warwickshire, which is the second biggest county in terms of Whitehouse names, while Jayne Sandles has done Northamptonshire and Leicestershire. There are now 4174 lines of entry (up from 3743 at the turn of the year). If you have access to FindmyPast, please contact me if you can help by doing (say) 100 Whitehouses, which usually amounts to about 150 lines of entry.

The Apprentices index, which can be accessed through the MISC EXPLANATIONS file, has been re-worked and some entries added. There are over 120 Whitehouse entries, as apprentices and masters.

Indexing of Whitehouses in the 1880 US census has made pleasing progress, with Massachusetts and New York State completed. This work has remained in the background, owing to priority being given to the England & Wales marriage details index, but it is hoped to keep it moving along this year. If you can type in an Excel spreadsheet and have access to the Ancestry database, please offer to help.

I got rid of a Whitehouse !

I was having trouble locating the church at which Ruth Ann Whitehouse married in 1875 in Hereford Registration District. The GRO had indexed her marriage under both Whitehouse and Whitehorne. Which was it ? I tried to discover the church, but my alphabetically-based “Marriage Mining” method seemed to have let me down. Sonja Smith (above-mentioned) and the Hereford Record Office found it under Whitehorne and that it had taken place at the village of Much Birch, a few miles south of the City of Hereford. The GRO clerks had fooled me by indexing it under the letter “B” for Birch, Much. One of the minor problems of the marriage details work has been country churches that are still holding on to their register, which is probably the same one as when the church was consecrated and so started to perform marriages. Much Birch was an example. However, some digging in the censuses showed very clearly that the name was originally Whitehorn. So, Ruth Ann has been struck off the marriages list and I did not have to find someone to visit the church, thank goodness.

Best wishes to all,

Keith

WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE

Newsletter, 1st January 2011

A happy New Year to all readers of this website.

More thanks

I thought that I had just invented a new word - “thankees” = people who are thanked. I put it into “Google” and found that a few people are using it instead of in the sense of “thankies”, instead of “thanks”. My biggest thankee this quarter and possibly for the last 5 years is Adrian Loker (WFHC correspondent 141 and 145 - he has two Whitehouse trees). He doesn’t live in the West Midlands, but was kind enough to do two and a half days work at the Stafford Record Office on Wolverhampton marriages. I was so buoyed up by this supremely kind and generous effort that I matched his time there, with the result that the Wolverhampton Registration District Marriage Details index is nearly complete, as far as it can be taken.

Smaller contributions can also make a big difference. Thus, Antoinette Betteridge (WFHC 431) visited the Derbyshire Record Office at Matlock, to finish off the Burton-upon-Trent Marriage Details index for me. Burton is just in Staffordshire, but the Registration District covers places in Derbyshire. For foreign readers who have never visited Matlock, it is a small town sitting in a valley by a river and surrounded in part by the rugged rock cliffs of the Derbyshire hills - very scenic, as so many parts of England are. Good citizens of the USA, please come and spend your dollars here now that exchange rates are so favourable, as our economy needs you.

Fay Summerfield (WFHC 028), a very long-standing correspondent, enabled me to finish the Bromsgrove RD Marriage Details index, by visiting a church which has held on to its registers. Carol Ravenhall (WFHC 280) also helped me, with a look-up in Birmingham Library.

Karen Burnell (Guild of One-Name Studies) again kindly stepped in when I had a problem in Solihull RD Marriage Details Index, which is nearly finished as I write this.

I must also thank Brian Morris (WFHC 518) who has made a start on Cannock marriages and the Warwick Record Office staff who have kindly helped me with a couple of marriages that I could pin down to specific churches.

Progress report

During this quarter, I have welcomed two new correspondents, WFHC 518 and 519, which brings the total for the year to 7, a manageable number. This compares with 39 in 2009 and 34 in 2008. Ideally, I would like to register about 12 new people a year. On this subject, I revert to the Kentucky Whitehouses (from James Whitehouse, the pioneer settler), for whom I have a vast tree running to over 60 pages (WFHC 137 etc). There are at least two potential new correspondents here and I have decided to register them in October 2011 and it would save my time if anyone else who wants to register in this connection would contact me before then. Adjusting the references for this huge tree is no small task and this will probably be the last time that I shall undertake such an operation.

The reduced level of new registrations has enabled me to make reasonable progress in putting onto computer more of my existing stock of trees. This quarter, I dealt with the trees of 11 previous correspondents, making a total of 29 for the year (target = 25). This means that there are just under a hundred left to do.

During the year, I re-assessed my priorities in relation to creating new records and decided to launch an all-out attack on marriage details. “Marriage details” means all the essential details that are seen on a marriage certificate. The main aim is to complete them for all Anglican churches in a large part of the West Midlands, where the Whitehouses are most concentrated, from Worcester in the south west, taking in the “Black Country” and Birmingham, via Lichfield to Burton-upon-Trent in the north east, areas of Warwickshire south and south-west of Birmingham (Kings Norton, Alcester Meriden and Solihull), and extending north to Wolverhampton, Walsall and Cannock. This seemed a very distant hope at the beginning of 2010 and now looks achievable if I can get a little help. Cannock (including Penkridge, its predecessor) is under way, but needs help. Walsall is beginning in a small way and needs help. Just a few hours will be very, very, welcome. Stourbridge is two thirds complete, but help is at hand. These three are the major works in progress. I have a promise of assistance with Alcester, Droitwich and Worcester, all of which are near to completion.

Meanwhile, I have made a database of Whitehouse marriage details for a large area of greater London, which, although not finished for all Anglican churches, is as near to complete as I can reasonably make it. That will be uploaded to the website very shortly, along with another database, highly fragmented, for the rest of England & Wales.

As a consequence of all this activity, the main Whitehouse GRO marriage index for 1 July 1837 to the end of 1911 has been altered to include a symbol “f”, signifying that full details of the marriage are available from one of the Marriage Details files. Use the Registration District and the Universal Number (UN) to find them.

Progress has been made on other fronts. In particular, the 1911 census has advanced. It has proceeded alphabetically to Dorset and further inroads have been made into Warwickshire. There are now 3,743 lines of entry (people in households containing a Whitehouse) altogether, which compares with 414 at the beginning of 2010. This rate of work cannot be maintained, but I shall be adding to it little by little. Please contact me if you can help.

New this quarter is an index of Apprentices, which can be accessed through the MISC EXPLANATIONS file. This is a work in progress, but enough has been completed to make it worth launching it. There are over 80 Whitehouse entries, as apprentices and masters. It will be a pleasure to visit The National Archives at Kew in order to add some of the missing detail. The tedious train journey there is compensated by the pleasant building and working environment.

The 1911 census

You have probably read that “TheGenealogist” and “Ancestry” are joining forces to produce a rival digitisation of the 1911 census to that of “FindMyPast”. Given the immense cost involved, it seems unlikely that it will become freely available in libraries. It will be interesting to discover whether they correct the indexing errors in FMP. I have found a few, but on the whole, the FMP index is of good quality. Recently, I discovered what I thought to be a curious glitch. When I want to know the number of Whitehouses in a specific county, I normally just select the county from the drop-down menu. However, there is another way, which is to type the name of the county into the “Residential Place” box. The latter sometimes gave a higher number ! For example, the answer is the same for Warwickshire (1540), but for Staffordshire it is 4694 against 4637 and for Worcestershire 1060 versus 1044. So, I asked FMP about Staffordshire and got the following reply:

“When using the ‘Place of residence’ field it draws matching results from the following header fields:

City/Municipal Borough; Ecclesiastical District; Parish; Registration District; Municipal Ward; Town; Hamlet.

A key word search in residential place should pick up anything (including parish or reg district) from any of these seven fields. When selecting Staffordshire from the drop down county list it only takes the details from one part of the census return - this is why different results are returned.”

Well, that makes sense, but on that basis I would have expected a much greater difference between the two results. I mentioned last time that the FMP index is based on Registration Districts, but many of these cover parts of more than one county. Thus, Yardley in Worcestershire falls within Solihull RD, but Solihull is in Warwickshire and therefore included in that county’s index. Indeed, there is a big difference in Derbyshire, 196 from the drop-down list, but 237 by typing in the name, which amounts to 21 percent more. The explanation must surely lie in boundary confusion, particularly with Nottinghamshire at such places as Sandiacre and Stapleford.

“My ancestor disappeared in the mid- to late-1800s”

According to an article in Family Tree Magazine, October 2010 (page 75), it has been estimated that between 1865 and 1871 more than 15,331 ships that left British ports were shipwrecked, many of which came to grief in Australian and New Zealand waters. Between 1850 and 1860, 571 ships were wrecked off Australia. The article focuses on the wrecking of ships of the Loch Line, which lost half of its fleet of 24. Such casualties hastened the replacement of sail by steam.

Best wishes to all,

Keith

WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE

Newsletter, 5th October 2010

Thank you very much

A huge amount has been achieved this quarter and I’m going to start by thanking the very many people who have helped me. I shall do this by alphabetical order of surname:

Arthur Aston (BMSGH Link Scheme) went to the Stafford Record Office and kindly transcribed for me some marriages at Burton-upon-Trent churches.

Karen Burnell (Guild of One-Name Studies) very helpfully sorted out a conundrum for me, when the register of Nechells St Clement should have showed the marriage of William Henry Whitehouse to Elizabeth Walton, but did not. It was solved when she found the signature of the couple underneath the particulars of a different marriage. Evidently they had signed a blank page of one of the church’s duplicate register books and someone had later filled it in wrongly.

Kaye Christian has no connection at all with Whitehouses. I approached her via a website and she was kind enough to send me many transcripts from Burntwood, Chasetown and Ogley Hay which were used as the foundation for constructing the Lichfield Registration District marriage details database. I did some jobs for her in London in exchange.

Lindsey Crompton (237) did some excellent “marriage mining” in the Birmingham Library on Aston Registration District marriages. She did a lot of work finding Duddeston marriages, where it was difficult to work out in which church to look first.

Judy Earp (474) went to Smethwick Archives, thereby settling the last few queries in Kings Norton RD. She inspected the original register of Smethwick St Paul, the microfiche for which are really poorly filmed.

David Fall (Guild of One-Name Studies) investigated his own database, relating to other surnames, to tip me off about the possible anomalous position of Nechells St Clement in the church order.

Netta Hughes (172) helped with the Kidderminster RD marriage details, which included getting sight of the original register of Bewdley St Anne, because the microfilm was scratched across the middle, causing part of the entry to be unreadable.

Adrian Loker (141, 145) checked the details of a marriage at Cheltenham.

Pat Molloy (409, 410) has been a tower of strength, filling in gaps in my Lichfield and Tamworth RD marriage details files.

Judith Parkins (071), who many years ago did some wonderful work in finding Whitehouses in the 1871 census for Wolverhampton, visited Warwick Record Office and extracted 5 Whitehouse marriages from the register of the country church of Kingsbury, within Tamworth Registration District.

Carol Ravenhall (280) followed up David Fall’s suggestion and found a missing marriage at Nechells St Clement.

Lennox Smith is a cousin of mine who lives near the church of Boldmere St Michael in the Sutton Coldfield area. That church has not deposited its registers in an archive and he went to the church office and extracted a marriage for me.

Dave Whitehouse (512) tackled the 1880 US census for Connecticut and Ohio, while

Bob Whitelock (457) transcribed Pennsylvania.

Thank you all so much, whether you did substantial chunks or just oddments to help me finish a project. You are stars. I have now got to the situation where I am simply asking people directly for their help. I’m glad to say that most people are pleased to do a little to contribute and it has been a revelation to me how many make light of their own physical infirmities when doing so.

Mining the marriages

The major news this quarter again concerns the marriage details indexes, which have been going splendidly, not least thanks to the helpers. To the major districts of Aston, Birmingham, Dudley, Kings Norton and West Bromwich, have been added five smaller ones - Bromsgrove, Burton-on-Trent, Kidderminster, Lichfield and Tamworth. In the result an amazing 3874 marriages have been extracted, over 40% of all the 1837 Q3 to 1911 Whitehouse marriages in England & Wales. In addition, Worcester RD is nearly complete, more than half of Stourbridge RD has been done and a start has been made on Wolverhampton RD.

Volunteers are wanted to work with me on Wolverhampton and to help me make a start on Walsall. Cannock RD is relatively straightforward and so anyone in that area who would like to make a contribution can make a big contribution for a relatively small amount of effort.

Nothing has been done on the London marriage details project this quarter. However, considerable progress has been made in sweeping up the miscellaneous transcriptions from other parts of the country into another marriage details file, not yet in a proper state to put on the website.

The 1911 census

I have put in a big effort here, increasing the coverage of my transcript to about 20% of England & Wales. I have been proceeding in two basic directions, the first alphabetically by county, where I have got as far as finishing Derbyshire, the second in tackling the county indexed as Warwickshire, which is over 75% complete. Warwickshire is, of course, a big county for Whitehouses and there are still 254 out of 1145 left to do. One thing that people might not realise is that in the Findmypast index, it is the county of the Registration District that is indexed. So, for example, Solihull is a Warwickshire Registration District, but contains people who live in Acocks Green and Yardley, which are in Worcestershire. Conversely, it would be no good looking under Warwickshire for someone living in 1911 in Edgbaston. That’s because Edgbaston lies in Kings Norton Registration District, which comes under Worcestershire. Further work will very likely proceed at a slower place.

Surely, you must be exclaiming, you are infringing Findmypast’s copyright ? Actually, no, because I am using a completely different layout and there is no copyright in the information - only in the “literary work” that results from it. Mine is a completely original and different literary work.

Long live spreadsheets

I mentioned in the last newsletter how pleased I was to have completed the tree of correspondent 003, at long last. Well, as a young lad, he remembered a cousin by the unusual name of Tertius Whitehouse. He rather admired Tertius, who he thought was born around 1917 and who joined the Grenadier Guards in the 1930s. So, I entered his name in the births section of FreeBMD (without any limit as to the years) and found nothing. After having written to the regiment, he obtained quite a bit of detail about Tertius, including a date of birth in 1910. My GRO births spreadsheet goes up to 1911, so I looked him up there and found a Tertins D Whitehouse. It’s only one letter different, but when you enter the name in a box, you only get what you enter, whereas a spreadsheet allows your eye to roam over many possibilities that might not have occurred to you, including misindexing. I should add that the Findmypast index to the 1911 census renders the poor baby as a male with the forenames Florence David !

More strange marriages

Another bigamous marriage came to light in the last quarter. I can’t immediately locate the tree involved, but will update this item if it comes back to me. [Postscript: Tree 194 453. The bigamous marriage was by a Thomas Willetts Whitehouse, an Iron Works Labourer, who married Mercy Pardoe in 1866. She was still alive when Thomas re-married in 1879 at the Derby Registry Office, to Lydia Harlow. Subsequently, he moved to Rotherham, changed his surname to Willetts. Yet, by 1907, when he married for the third time, it was as Thomas Willetts Whitehouse. By then, both Mercy and Lydia had died].

Meanwhile, correspondent 360 asked whether it was correct that two Whitehouse sisters in the Bahamas in the mid-1800s had married two brothers who were stepsons. That was my information gleaned from another correspondent and it looked credible.

“RADAP” & New Registrations Report

The trees of 6 correspondents have been digitised in the last three months, i.e. in accordance with the annual target of 25. Three new correspondents (515 to 517) have been registered.

“Will technology ever catch up with paper ?”

That’s the question posed in the title of a fascinating paper in Journal of One-Name Studies October-December 2010, which has just arrived. It has long been bothering family historians and archivists that the current recording materials in popular use, CD-ROMs, may have only a limited life. After all, in the last 20 years or so, computer users have been through floppy disks and 3-1/2 inch diskettes, which have not survived. Acid-free paper is still the currently preferred medium for the long term and that is what I shall be using to archive my collection of Whitehouse trees and other material. However, a new kind of disk called the “Milliennata” has been marketed and it is claimed that it should easily last 1000 years. The snag is that it requires a high energy laser to write to the disk and so needs a special drive to “burn” the disk. The special drive currently costs £900 and the disk £17 for 4.7 GB of storage. It’s a wonderful step in the right direction, but very probably will be superseded by something better, just like the floppy disk and the computer with the 5-1/4 inch drive.

Blow, blow thou winter wind ?

“Hi Margaret,

Having had no acknowledgment after a fortnight, I am re-sending this e-mail with a request for receipt, to make sure that you have received it.

Best wishes,

Keith” (sent 9th September)

“Dear Margaret,

Thank you for the automated acknowledgment of receipt of the extensive family tree which I sent to you three weeks ago. The Whitehouse Family History Centre operates as an entirely free service for the public benefit, so there are absolutely no charges of any kind whatsoever. For further information, please visit my website. Should you decide to get in touch again, please quote the above reference.

Best wishes,

Keith...” (sent 17th September)

Was she unable to open the attachment, which was sent in both Excel and Portable Document Format ? Was she taken poorly ? Perhaps she died and the acknowledgement was sent by someone else. Or did she simply disbelieve the tree that was sent to her and so didn’t think it appropriate to send even a brief note of thanks ? Maybe I will never know.

Best wishes to all,

Keith

WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE

Newsletter, 2nd July 2010

What an excuse !

The website update is running a little late owing to blackcurrants and the world cup football. (Whoops ! Uber den Fussball dürfen wir nicht sprechen). The extraordinary hot spell here in the south-east of England has brought on the blackcurrants and although we have only seven bushes, the crop is huge and I have been out picking for hours these last few days. As for the goings-on in South Africa, the alert among you might have found that “Findmypast” were allowing free access to their website for a limited time on the days on which England were playing. I have taken advantage of that to add to the growing indexed transcript of Whitehouses in the 1911 census. By the way, I reckon that there are about 15,200 lines of entry to complete and I have reached round about the13 percent mark. Transcription is a slow and complex job, but it is better to make some progress than none. If you find someone there on your tree who is not referenced with the WFHC number in the right hand column, please let me know. I should also add that there are indexing errors in “Findmypast”, so this website is a good place to look if you have failed to find a Whitehouse who ought to be on the 1911 census.

Mining the marriages

The major news this quarter concerns marriages in Aston Registration District. Such good progress has been made in “mining” the details of 515 Whitehouse marriages from Aston church registers in the period from 1st July 1837, when civil registration began, to the end of 1911 that I am putting the file on the website, incomplete though it still is: there are 22 Anglican marriages yet to be found. Interestingly, only 58 of the weddings took place at the Register Office or in a non-Anglican church, which is a lower proportion than in Birmingham or West Bromwich RDs. The Aston RD project was not originally due to begin until next year, but has been brought forward because of the success with Birmingham and Kings Norton RDs, the eventual aim being to offer complete coverage of Anglican churches in the Birmingham area. Lindsey Crompton (237) has again been helping me and I am very grateful to her.

Good progress has been made with a similar project in London. As many will be aware, “Ancestry” has indexed the church registers held by the London Metropolitan Archives (LMA). Of course, we should all be grateful to “Ancestry”, despite the usual gripes about the quality of the index. I have enjoyed exercising my ingenuity to find marriages that have been indexed in the wrong year, under incorrect names or, in one case, filmed but apparently not indexed. However, “Ancestry” did redeem itself by correctly indexing a marriage under “Whitehorne”, which the GRO index had listed under Whitehouse (UN 7059: Elizabeth Whitehorne, now removed from the main WFHC marriages database).

Excellent though the “Ancestry” index is as a finding aid, it covers only those records held at the LMA. I have been searching other marriages at the Westminster Archives, which are in a side street near the Abbey. This is a wonderful place in which to work, with a water dispenser and coffee machine in a small ground floor room, equipped with four comfortable chairs and everything well organised in the 5th floor search room. Yet other marriages, in City parishes, will probably require a visit to the Guildhall Library. I have discovered that at least one large church, Kensington St Mary Abbots, has not deposited its records in an archive. That could be a problem. Unravelling the mysteries of which churches belonged to which Registration District at the relevant time is a slow business and I need to get a good deal further before it is worthwhile putting the database onto this website.

Some very strange marriages

Yes, the Whitehouses have them all - bigamous, under age, without consent and incestuous. I have had much cause to reflect on this subject this quarter.

Correspondent 513 kindly gave me permission to tell you of the man who married his niece. A family from the Redditch area who were needle manufacturers includes a James Whitehouse (1809-1883) who, after the death of his first wife, married again in 1847 at Shoreditch St Leonard to Sarah Whitehouse, who was 15 years younger and the daughter of James’ elder brother, Thomas. The evidence is extremely solid. This was no marriage of mere convenience, for they had four children and correspondent 513 is a descendant born from one of them. The tree also contains three marriages between first cousins.

Then I had a discussion with correspondent 043 about Emma Whitehouse and Thomas Swingler, who married each other twice ! The first marriage took place at the Birmingham Registry Office on 1st March 1883, Thomas, who was about 6 years younger than Emma, declaring himself to be 21 when he was not. Eleven months later they re-married at the parish church of Boldmere, which at that time was a hamlet near Sutton Coldfield, but now subsumed into the great Birmingham metropolitan sprawl. Thomas again declared himself to be 21, which he then was. It seems that the first marriage must have been without the consent of Thomas’ parents. This episode set me off in a quest to discover whether marrying as a minor, without parental consent, would make the marriage void - that is to say of no legal effect. The only answer that I could find, in a time-limited search, is that, if parallel circumstances arose today, marrying in England at age 16 to18 without parental consent would not make the marriage void unless notice of objection had been raised either upon calling of the banns in church or by a written entry in the Superintendent Registrar’s book. That did not tell me what the law was in 1883.

My request to correspondent 058 for a scan of the marriage certificate for “his” Alfred Whitehouse to Mary Anne Geer in 1869 at Kensington St Mary Abbots caused him to remark that Alfred was only 19. There was no recorded parental consent. It paled into insignificance, I told him, beside another marriage in his very large tree, when Mary Ann Harriet Whitehouse, born 27th November 1841, married George John Fisher, an artificial florist, on 23rd November 1857 at Paddington Holy Trinity. She gave her age as 19, but was a few days short of her 16th birthday. If the date of birth (which comes from her baptism in 1843) is correct, this marriage was definitely illegal.

There were only two or three enquiries this quarter, which enabled me to get on with the records programme. One of them was a descendant of one of the huge tribe of Kentucky Whitehouses (WFHC 137 etc.). His information included a Marion Taylor (male) Whitehouse who married Edna Aspey in 1910 in Indiana, before a magistrate. He and Edna split up, Marion’s draft record for his service in the first world war said that he was single. After the war, Edna was using her maiden name and Marion re-married. Bigamy ? Maybe they got divorced, but my enquirer had another explanation, which related to Edna’s Mormon parentage. He reckoned that they refused to accept the marriage as legal, as it did not take place in church. This set me thinking that if the Aspeys resided in Utah, did the laws of that state recognise a marriage before a J.P. in Indiana ? A cursory look at the marriage laws of US states soon persuaded me that I had more urgent things to do.

Bigamy in family trees is difficult to prove, but there are a couple of cases in my records, for correspondents 252 and 510, where the circumstantial evidence is strong.

It was the final “triumph” of the quarter that at long, long, last, I got round to putting the tree of one of my earliest and most helpful correspondents (003) on computer. A George Whitehouse in his wider family has set a record among Whitehouses, by marrying 5 times, on the last occasion to a step-daughter (his late wife’s daughter by a previous marriage). This isn’t the first such instance, as correspondent 467 will testify: see “No laughing matter”, Newsletter of 25th September 2008.

It’s a very long time since my last correspondence with 044, but I have digitised her tree and sent it to her last known address. The tree contains the marriage of Kate Whitehouse to the brother of her deceased husband. Such happenings are fairly frequent, although they were against the law in Victorian times. It was not until the Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Marriage Act of 1907 that a widower could marry the sister of his deceased wife and, strangely, not until the Deceased Brother’s Widow’s Marriage Act of 1921 that a widow could marry the brother of her deceased husband.

Dudley non-conformist records

Surviving Dudley non-Conformist records to 1837 were transcribed by Arthur Rollason and a book was printed in 1899 entitled “The Old Non-Parochial Registers of Dudley”. It has subsequently been re-published on a CD and re-indexed. I have extracted the Whitehouses and put them into a spreadsheet format. I used the diskette of a kind correspondent to check that I had not missed any entries in the Index Nominum at the back of the printed volume. (That index gives only the page on which a surname occurs at least once, without telling you how many times it occurs, so every indexed page has to be trawled - very annoying). To my surprise/horror, I found when searching the CD that several of the Whitehouse entries simply failed to register, i.e. the digital search did not pick them up. Anyway, all’s well and it was nice to be able to use the digital search facility, defective though it was.

Wednesbury Poor Law documents

I have remarked often that relatively few Whitehouses left wills before the Principal Probate Registry was established in 1858. That’s because before the Industrial Revolution they were mainly poor agricultural labourers and after it they were poor coal miners, iron puddlers, nailers and engine operators. Readers will be aware, I hope, that I have put on the website a very extensive database of Whitehouse wills and administrations, as well as those (of all surnames) mentioned in them. Coverage from 1731 to1860 is pretty well complete for the whole of England & Wales. So, what can be done to get further back when there is no will or administration ? With such a frequent name as Whitehouse, parish registers are normally fairly useless, as are documents that merely contain names, such as the Hearth Tax rolls.

Poor law records survive for some parishes. If you are lucky, they will have been filmed by the Latter Day Saints and therefore be obtainable via a local Family History Centre. Those for Wednesbury have not, but I went to read some of them at the Staffordshire Record Office, searching for every Whitehouse.

Their holding includes 223 Settlement Examinations (1740-1801), 108 Removal Orders (1734-1791), 155 Bastardy Bonds and related documents (1714 - 1809) and 229 Apprenticeship Indentures (1771-1809). I did not search the Bastardy documents, but I did cover the other three sets, trawling my way gently through the precious originals. This is not the place for a discourse on the types of document, the subject being well covered in genealogy books, but it’s nice to list and display some examples that relate to Whitehouse family history. My searches revealed the following:

1. Settlement Examination and Removal Order, dated 2nd November 1791, relating to William Whitehouse and his wife Ann. William states that he is aged 38, originally from Tipton, worked in West Bromwich and then for about 50 weeks in Wednesbury for one Thomas Lawton, a miner. At that juncture he was seized by the parish officers of Harborne (Staffs), having allegedly fathered a child of Ann Baker of Harborne. He married her, having been bribed to do so by the Harborne parish officers. Evidently, he returned to Wednesbury, but did not resume employment by Thomas Lawton. Having obtained no Settlement Certificate elsewhere and not having worked in Wednesbury for a complete year (which would have entitled him to a Settlement Certificate in Wednesbury), his place of Settlement was Tipton, so he and his wife (who takes the husband’s place of settlement) were ordered to be removed there. That avoided them becoming a charge on the poor rate of the parish of Wednesbury.

2. Apprenticeship Indenture dated 18th December 1795 of Elizabeth Whitehouse, a poor child aged about 14, to some cotton manufacturers in Manchester. These people were obviously looking for cheap labour, as there were several similar indentures by them at around this time.

3. Apprenticeship Indenture dated 27th June 1801 of Isaiah Hughes, a poor child aged about 10, to Joshua Whitehouse of Dudley, nailor.

I have scanned items 1 and 2 in the file Wednesbury PL docs.pdf .

Help wanted, please

The two main areas where help is wanted are

- making a start on a marriage details project for Wolverhampton RD

- with the 1880 US census (see index page)

Please volunteer. All help will be gratefully acknowledged in this newsletter.

Registration

Those who have visited the website last year or earlier will know that I have been registering newcomers, working on their Whitehouse lines, drawing up trees for them where necessary, archiving the tree and linking them to distant cousins or relations by marriage. This registration procedure is now closed for an indefinite period, in order to free up my time to work on records, make progress with the digitisation of the trees in existing papers, and generally to reduce my workload.

The RADAP document, accessible from the index page of this website, explains my Re-indexing, Archiving, Digitisation And Paper-destruction project.

While, in general, the Whitehouse Family History Centre is closed for new registrations, I shall continue to make a few exceptions. Please see the Registration document on the index page.

“RADAP” & New Registrations Report

The trees of 6 correspondents have been digitised in the last three months, i.e. in accordance with the annual target of 25. One new correspondent (514) has been registered.

Family Tree programs

“I just pulled up Nina from the tree names list, and what was there? John & Betty Galloway as parents. I have no idea how that happened!!! I can assure you, I sure didn’t enter it that way. If you just go thru the pedigree charts, it is not there showing that erroneous information, and everything looks fine. John & Betty show just their two children and no Nina just as it should be. To get rid of that erroneous information, I had to delete Nina, and then reenter her as a wife of Marion with no parents, and also add her first husband, Floyd Darling. Now Nina is shown with no known parents with two husbands, and Marion is shown with two wives.” (Extract from a recent e-mail to me).

I think I’ll stick to doing my trees in Excel, which is (a) widely used, (b) compatible with the free “Open Office software, (c) flexible, enabling blocks of tree to be moved around easily and (d) very adaptable to “Tall Tree” layouts (oldest ancestor on the left on a portrait sheet) which save space and are easily printable to a relatively small number of sheets.

Best wishes to all

Keith

WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE

Newsletter, 31st March 2010

Birmingham area marriages

Fantastic progress has been made this quarter, not least in completing the marriage details index for Birmingham Registration District and taking the Kings Norton Registration District to the point of substantial completion, where only a few illegibility problems and minor checks remain to be dealt with. These two Registration Districts join Dudley and West Bromwich in having all the details given on a Whitehouse marriage certificate transcribed, except the name of the clergyman and whether the people signed or made a mark. Coverage is from 1st July 1837, when civil registration began, to the end of 1911, and is complete for all marriages in anglican churches. These four indexes constitute a huge advance in Whitehouse genealogy, especially considering that they can be sorted by the forename of the father.

I want to thank, from the bottom of my heart, all who have helped with these projects:

- Jayne Sandles (441) for her substantial work on Edgbaston St. Bartholomew and extracting two entries at Selly Oak St Mary;

- Joan Morganti (496) for extracting four entries at Selly Hill St Stephen and especially for coming to my rescue with a morning’s work at Smethwick Archives, consulting the original paper registers, when I was badly caught out by illegible microfiche;

- Carol Ravenhall (280) for work on the original paper registers of Edgbaston St Bartholomew, to solve legibility problems there;

- Lindsey Crompton (237) for help with queries in the registers of Balsall Heath St Paul and Kings Heath All Saints;

- Barbara Harvey and Karen Burnell (Guild of One-name Studies) for providing “cardinal points” for some of the churches and Karen for other help and advice;

- David Fall (Guild of One-name Studies) for help in filling in some “holes” in my own extractions; and

- Netta Hughes (172) for going to the Worcester Local Studies Centre to obtain particulars of a marriage at Beoley St Leonard.

I also thank Pat Molloy (409 & 410), who cleared up a query on my West Bromwich RD marriage project.

Help wanted, please

I could do so much more of the marriage details work if I could get help at Cannock, Walsall or Wolverhampton Local Studies and the same goes for the Dudley Archives at Coseley, where some of the Stourbridge RD registers are located. There have been no offers. I think I shall simply have to resort to asking people by e-mail. The Birmingham area remains unfinished, as Aston RD has yet to be done, and here I have some basic work to do on the order in which marriages are arranged in the GRO clerks’ books. After this, I shall need help at the Birmingham Library (again). Anyhow, please, please let me know if you could spare a few hours at any of these places.

Besides help with the marriage details indexes, there is another area where a contribution could be made without the need to visit a local history centre or county record office. It involves use of “Ancestry” (available in many public libraries - and some people have subscriptions) and consists of extracting Whitehouse entries from the US census and putting them onto an Excel spreadsheet. A helper would be given one state (not a very Whitehouse-populated one !) and one census year on which to work. There must be many people out there in the States who have visited this website and would like to give back something as a thank-you, so I keep hoping.

A quiet quarter

There have been a few enquiries, about seven I think, which I have answered. I have registered one tree (513) which I consider of significant historical interest in the field of needle manufacture in the Redditch area and contains other interesting features. Six trees from the paper files of existing correspondents have been digitised.

The RADAP document, accessible from the index page of this website, explains my Re-indexing, Archiving, Digitisation And Paper-destruction project.

While, in general, the Whitehouse Family History Centre is closed for new registrations, I shall continue to make a few exceptions for trees that are clearly laid out, properly researched, carefully checked and replete with occupations, day, month and year dates for Whitehouses and their spouses and the places of events. Collateral lines, that is to say the brothers and sisters of Whitehouses not in the direct line of pedigree, and the descendants of the brothers should be investigated. A high standard of work and a clear layout will be required. I shall also make a few exceptions for trees that I want to index, because of their historical interest, but I shall expect to be presented with good research. Other exceptions might be made, at my discretion, for special reasons. Altogether, it is expected that only a few very well organised and careful enquirers will qualify for registration.

The OPERATIONAL REVIEW document (link on index page) gives more background and explains how to register (exceptionally).

Newsletter reprieved

As announced in February, I changed my decision of 1st January 2010 not to continue with the newsletter and so it will continue to appear at around the end of every quarter, when the website is updated.

Report of other progress

The three new pre-1837 marriage files, containing witness information, in Dudley, Handsworth and Kingswinford, are launched on the website today. They have already played vital roles in improving trees.

West Bromwich baptisms have been targeted, giving occupations and addresses from 1813 on to as late as 1861.

Those wanting early records have been rewarded with a detailed index to the Sedgley Manorial Rolls. I give public thanks here to Janet Rowley for allowing me to use her extracts.

The 1911 census grinds slowly on, with the addition of another 300 lines of entry. The file is still tiny (there are over 11,000 Whitehouses in the 1911 census), but I felt it worth making a start. Please point out to me entries that should be referenced to your tree, as I do not guarantee to spot them all.

A marriages details file for London Parishes (1837-1911) is making worthwhile progress behind the scenes.

A weird story

How about this for a truly strange genealogical experience ? On 30th June 1990, a lady telephoned. She had seen a Family Bible in a second hand shop, copied down the information from the flyleaf, relating to the family of Christopher and Esther Whitehouse, and dictated it to me. I wrote it down, thanked her very much, asked her name (which she didn’t want to give) and filed it away. When correspondent 498 contacted me in the last quarter of 2009, somehow or other I managed to recall and retrieve the piece of paper, filling a gap in his tree and giving useful date information. I wonder whether that lady remembers her kind act.

Best wishes to all readers,

Keith

WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE

Newsletter, 1st January 2010, revised 7th February 2010

Operational review

In September, I announced that an operational review would take place at the end of 2009, with a view to reducing my workload. I warned of drastic changes. As mentioned on the index page, one major change is that I am not accepting new registrations until further notice. There will be a few exceptions. One very obvious exception is that anyone offering (and performing) substantial amounts of relevant help with transcribing records will be very welcome to register. The most relevant help wanted is with marriage details in the West Midlands. I want help, please, in transcribing from church marriage registers in Dudley Archives with Stourbridge Registration District (Kingswinford area), in Walsall, Wolverhampton and, to some extent, Birmingham for Kings Norton and Aston. See also below.

I shall also make a few exceptions for trees that are clearly laid out, properly researched, carefully checked and replete with occupations, day, month and year dates for Whitehouses and their spouses and the places of events. Collateral lines, that is to say the brothers and sisters of Whitehouses not in the direct line of pedigree, and the descendants of the brothers should be investigated. A high standard of work and a clear layout will be required. I shall also make a few exceptions for trees that I want to index, because of their historical interest, but I shall expect to be presented with good research. Altogether, it is expected that only a few very well organised and careful enquirers will qualify for registration. The trees of registered correspondents will continue to be archived and referenced to files on the website and distant cousins put in touch with each other.

The operational review document (link on index page) gives more detail and explains how to register (exceptionally).

Popular or what ?

Last quarter’s newsletter contained a buried invitation to those who had read it to let me know. There were 14 responses. It isn’t many among over 500 correspondents, but I thank all who took the trouble to e-mail me. I have changed my decision of 1st January 2010 not to continue with the newsletter and so it will continue to appear every quarter, although maybe not at the same length as some previous ones.

Progress report

As I wrote on New Year’s Day, I have cleared the backlog from the last quarter and as of 7th February am fully up to date with the new registrations. Last quarter I registered twelve new correspondents, under references 501 to 512, making 39 for the year (2008: 34). All twelve except 512 have been linked to existing trees and even there an existing tree was used to help to unravel a problem. Progress with converting the paper files of existing correspondents into digitised trees in 2009 was limited, a matter to which I turned in the operational review. In the current year to date, I have been occupied largely with correspondence and research relating to last quarter’s new trees, but I have digitised four trees of existing correspondents, creating one new link-up in the process. Work has started on new marriage indexes for the late 1700s and up to 1837 in the parish churches of Handsworth and Dudley in the West Midlands. There has also been progress with a marriage details index for Kings Norton Registration District.

Help wanted

Parish registers in London on-line

A big thank you to “Ancestry” and the London Metropolitan Archives for digitising many parish registers in the London area (that we now refer to as the inner boroughs). I have been looking at the marriage indexes and after only a small pilot study have found them unreliable. Of course, there are many transcription difficulties, but that is not an excuse for listing 229 marriages from 1754 to 1921 in the name Whitchouse, which does not exist except as a misreading of Whitehouse. That might be forgiven if the dates were accurate, but they are not. The pilot study revealed that the marriage of John Henry Whitehouse to Mary Ann Harriet Lawrence took place in 1836, but the year is indexed as 1834. Amina Whitehouse’s marriage to Charles Henry Alder took place on 7th August, but the index says the 9th. In both cases, the dates are perfectly legible. Clara Jane Whitehouse married David Henry Smith, but “Ancestry” overlooked the carat sign for the insertion of his middle name and indexed him as Henry David Smith. The incompetence of Ancestry reached the laughable stage in the marriage of Barbara Whitehouse to Thomas Henry Clark on Vth August 1900 at Old Brentford, St Paul. Old Brentford is just across the river from Kew Gardens, but “Ancestry” confused it with Old Ford, in London’s east end and misread the Latin numeral V as the arabic number 11. Alas, all this means that nothing in the index can be trusted: it will be necessary to look at the image for each individual entry and there are a lot.

As a result of this, I have made a start on creating a London area marriage details file.

A famous Whitehouse

Correspondent 470 has told me that a Joseph Whitehouse participated in a famous event in US history, the Lewis and Clarke expedition (1804-06) that explored the territory known as the 'Louisiana Purchase' that was bought from France about 1803. Joseph was born in Fairfax County, Virginia about 1775 and later moved to Kentucky. He, along with others in the party, wrote a journal describing the journey from St. Louis Missouri to the mouth of the Columbia river on the West Coast. A book by Steven Ambrose called 'Undaunted Courage' describes this adventure.

More pioneer Whitehouses

The quarter before last, I wrote of my gigantic tree of Kentucky Whitehouse pioneers. This last quarter, driven by the arrival of new correspondents, I have been busy with two more large trees, one of the Clerkenwell opticians (WFHC 036 etc.), some of whom emigrated to Queensland in the 1860s and the other of Abel and Matilda Whitehouse of Birmingham, who took ten children with them to become pioneer farmers in New Zealand. After early difficulties, both families flourished. Again, these large trees have caused much disruption to other work.

New addition to the WFHC website

However, the New Zealand tree has had the happy consequence that I have got to grips with the recent New Zealand births deaths and marriages website: www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/search/. As a result, I have created a Whitehouse version of the marriages listed there from 1851 to 1911, with WFHC references added. This has been uploaded to the website.

Eliza & Elizabeth as siblings

Someone asked me recently whether it was likely that two sisters could be named Eliza and Elizabeth. My answer was that it is rare, but does happen occasionally. Now I can cite a specific, well-documented instance, in the tree of correspondents 080 and 300, where Joseph Whitehouse and his wife Ellen had Elizabeth born 1857-58 and Eliza born 1869-70 (I have marriage details for them both and they are co-present on the 1871 census entry).

Discrepant occupations

Another enquirer, Lydia Court, has been e-mailing me about a marriage of a Benjamin Whitehouse. He gave his occupation as silversmith and that of his father, Thomas Whitehouse, as builders clerk. There was only one candidate Benjamin, apparently dismissed by my enquirer, because he was an electroplater. Moreover, that Benjamin’s father, Thomas, was a grinder and at times a boatman. On the simple face of it, the occupations were wrong, so how could he be the right Benjamin ? Well, electroplater is not so far removed from silversmith. The following day, by coincidence, I was researching one Thomas B Goodfellow who married Henrietta Mary Ann Harriet ("Lilly") Whitehouse in 1868. Here he is on four

consecutive censuses:

1871 Electro Plater ae 27, RG10/1340 FO 139

1881 Silversmith ae 37, RG11/1387 FO 5

1891 Electro Plate Manufacturer ae 48 RG12/1079 FO 79

1901 Silversmith ae 55 RG13/1256 FO 1256.

That still doesn’t get over the problem of the occupation of Benjamin’s father, Thomas. My guess is that Thomas was an itinerant knife grinder who used the canals to travel around. Maybe Benjamin was ashamed that his father, who was not recorded as a witness of the marriage, carried on such a lowly trade and so lied. I decided that I was right, on the balance of probabilities, to accept Benjamin as correct.

Blow me ! You have to be careful with Free BMD marriages...

Correspondent 296 descends from the second marriage of Alice Maria WHITEHOUSE, her first husband, Alfred BLOWER having died in 1916. To check the date of the second marriage, I searched all people of the name BLOWER marrying all people of the name MORRIS from 1916 to 1930. There was only one success, which was for a BLOWER of the male gender, which was no good. Then I searched again, this time putting in only BLOWER Alice and leaving out the man's name. This came up with a "hit" showing that Alice M BLOWER married a Mr. NORRIS (March quarter 1917, Dudley 6b 1179). I made another search, this time with just the quarter and the GRO reference. It came up with Alice M BLOWER and Thomas MORRIS. This was quite extraordinary, as it shows that when the GRO cross-references marriages (which it started doing in 1912), FreeBMD works on the cross reference (here, erroneously, NORRIS) and not on the individual names which have the same GRO volume and page number. I was flabbergasted.

“Our policy is one of continual improvement”

One of the subjects seldom aired in these newsletters is errors in my databases. Alas, there have been some, but it is very seldom that anyone has brought one to my attention. When I find one, it is ruthlessly hunted down and put right. So, please point out any that you find, even if they are just typographical. This quarter, I found, to my consternation, that the 1841 census index missorted when it was put into name and age order: the names were all right, but a few of the ages were out of sequence, with a few younger people appearing after the oldest one. The explanation for this is that these out-of-order ages were in a different number format and the only way that I know of correcting this glitch properly is to retype them in the same format as the others, which I have done. As I have missed a few, I have fixed the problem by applying the option to sort “anything that looks like a number, as a number.” I think all is now well, but if not, please let me know.

With regard to marriages and deaths, one of my continual problems is that people who are really Whitehouses are sometimes indexed under other names, either because of official error or, as happened recently, deliberate change of name. My policy is to regard the name registered at birth as the correct one and if someone born Whitehouse has changed his or her name before he or she marries or dies, to index the marriage and death as Whitehouse, enter “v” in the variants column, and make an entry in the variants file. Similarly, if a female of another name marries a male Whitehouse and changes that name before re-marriage or death, the re-marriage or death is indexed as a Whitehouse one, with the above variant procedure applied. The last quarter featured a family that seemed to have difficulty in deciding whether they were Whitehouses or Birds or the two in hyphenated or non-hyphenated combination.

These name changes or corrections have a bad effect on my 1837-1911 GRO marriage indexes, where I need to allot each marriage a number (called the Universal Number or UN for short). When any marriage not in the GRO indexes under Whitehouse is added to my database I ought to re-number the whole database. That used to be a fairly simple matter. Now it is more complicated, because there are marriage detail files which use the same Universal Number. So far, only three of these files have been put on the website, but there are others on my computer in very early stages. For the moment, the additions are being numbered as “New 1” onwards and when the database is sorted into UN order, they appear at the very end.

All too much for him ?

Entry in the marriage register of the church of St John of Wapping (east end of London), 26th August 1859:

“In consequence of the man G J Holman’s fainting before the answer to the first question, the marriage could not be proceeded with; and the parties have not since appeared for the purpose. T.W.Nowell Rector Nov 1 1859”. The official consequence ? If you have a good memory of these newsletters, you will have guessed it - the very same “marriage” between George Joseph Holman and Harriet Gorham is recorded in the GRO Index !

You’ve been great - thank you so much

A big thank you to Adrian Loker (141 & 145), Lyndsey Crompton (237), Laraine Preece (420) and Jayne Sandles (441) who have helped me by looking up specific marriages at the Staffordshire Record Office and the Birmingham Library. Offers of even small amounts of help are very, very gratefully received.

Best wishes to all readers,

Keith

WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE

Newsletter, 2nd October 2009

Giant tree causes huge backlog

This quarter I have spent countless hours working on the vast tree of James Whitehouse, a pioneer settler in Kentucky in 1783. The story behind this tree is wonderful to relate - James is arrested in London for petty theft, sentenced to death and then has his sentence commuted to transportation to America. After a while in Virginia, he is invited to join a party led by a pioneer explorer, Simon Kenton, to sail down the Ohio River and settle in Kentucky. The party is 41 strong and Kenton commissions a boat 120 feet long. James and his wife, Sarah, become pioneer farmers there and have 15 children, nearly all of whom are known to have survived. Generation after generation of Kentucky farmers, with large families, ensue, some moving to the neighbouring state of Indiana. Over the years I have “collected” ten descendants and accumulated a large paper file several inches thick. At long last, prompted by the arrival of a new correspondent (239), I have managed to draft a comprehensive tree, which runs to 60 pages. This effort, which took many weeks longer than expected, has caused a large backlog in dealing with the trees of others who have registered later (495, 496, 498, 499, 341 and 500). Mercifully, there have been only 4 new registrations in this quarter - it’s always quietest in the summer - which are 236, 499, 341 and 500. I shall try hard to clear this backlog within the next quarter and hope that all those in the queue will bear with me.

Despite the backlog problem, I am urging all those who have expressed an intention to register to do so this quarter and to submit really good trees, replete with births, deaths and marriages, day, month and year dates, places of these events and occupations and to include them for both Whitehouse and wife/husband, to the best of their ability and knowledge. As announced on the index page of this website, I shall be carrying out a review of my work on Whitehouses, in order to reduce the time spent on this activity to a level which is sustainable for me. Absolutely nothing will be treated as sacred in this review and there will certainly be drastic changes. ~~By the way, I wonder how many people actually read this newsletter. If you are reading this bit, please take a few moments to e-mail me.~~ ~~Use the address [address deleted] and the subject line “Read Newsletter”.~~

US census and marriage indexes launched

The Kentucky farmers tree brought with it the immediate problem of referencing it and has forced me into starting to index Whitehouses in the US census and to build a marriage index. I have decided to index the 1840 to 1880 US censuses in a comprehensive manner, that is to say to cover all Whitehouses and variants thereon and to progress slowly, state by state. So, today I am putting onto the website the 1840, 1850, 1860 and 1870 censuses of Indiana and Kentucky. For the 1880 census, I have been able to include two other states, Illinois and Texas, and calculate that this gives coverage of about 25 percent of all the USA. This exercise has been carried out using the “Ancestry” search facility. I am sorry to report that there are again many weird versions of the name in the “Ancestry” index. Subtle searching has uncovered some, but probably not all.

I have no access to official US marriage records, which seem to be held in the individual counties within the states, and so have decided to make this file a “refs” one, in which only those marriages that can be referenced to a Whitehouse tree in my collection, are included. At present, I have only indexed the Kentucky farmers tree and one English tree with an emigrant to the US.

Dudley baptisms and burials

It has long been a principle of mine to keep improving and adding to the records on this website, no matter that some correspondence does not receive attention as promptly as I would like. The parish church of Dudley, St Thomas, has long been an annoyance to me, mainly because the IGI does not cover baptisms in a straightforward way and because the burials are not in the National Burials Index. I have therefore created my own indexed transcripts covering 1813 to 1846, which have been compiled by “trawling” through films and using the church’s rough draft index and the confusing IGI batches as checking aids. In a rare departure from the norm, I uploaded these in mid-quarter.

Marriage details

Please forgive the repetition, but many readers are still unaware of the marriage details files now available on this website. There are three of them, covering Dudley, West Bromwich and Birmingham Registration Districts for the years 1837 (1st July) to 1911. They show everything on the marriage certificate except the name of the officiating minister or registrar and whether the parties and witnesses signed or made a mark. These files have been compiled from church registers, nearly wholly from those of anglican churches. I am very pleased to report that I have been able to add to the Birmingham file, which now covers 57% of all marriages in that registration district, up to 1911. This figure needs to be set in the context that another 16% are non-anglican marriages, the details of which are difficult to obtain, the GRO being the principal source.

A big thank you to Pat Saul (491) and Caroline Whitehouse (469) who have helped me by looking up a few specific marriages at the Staffordshire Record Office and Dudley Archives. Offers of even small amounts of help are very, very gratefully received. Chief need at the moment is for someone willing to look up specific marriage entries at the Birmingham Library. Also, I have one marriage that needs investigation at the Sandwell Library in Smethwick.

Best wishes to all readers,

Keith

WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE

Newsletter, 30th June 2009

Want to register ? Join the queue now !

There have been 12 new registrations this quarter (reference numbers 239, 283 and 489 to 498), making a total of 23 for the half year. This level of activity is unsustainable for me and something will have to change soon. The tree of correspondent 493 (Pamela Claire Phillips) is currently being worked on. Behind her in the queue are 239, 495, 496 and 498 - and some of the trees are large. At the same time, there is follow-up correspondence, which sometimes involves extensive revision of trees that have already been digitised. My current advice to anyone wishing to register is to get in the queue as soon as possible and submit a good quality tree, replete with exact dates, places and occupations and giving census references.

Some people don’t understand the registration concept. They think they are going to be asked to do time-consuming research. They are not, but they are asked to get together the information that they possess and present it as a tree in a clear and comprehensible manner, if appropriate using the materials available on my website.

Marriage details

Many readers are still unaware of the marriage details files now available on this website. There are three of them, covering Dudley, West Bromwich and Birmingham Registration Districts for the years 1837 (1st July) to 1911. They show everything on the marriage certificate except the name of the officiating minister or registrar and whether the parties and witnesses signed or made a mark.

In Dudley Registration District, which covers Coseley, Dudley, Ettingshall*, Lower & Upper Gornal, Rowley Regis, Sedgley (including St Mary, Hurst Hill*) and Tipton, the index is complete for all Anglican churches and gives the detail of 95% of all Whitehouse marriages. West Bromwich RD covers Birchfield*, Hamstead*, Handsworth*, Moxley*, Oldbury, Perry Barr*, West Bromwich and Wednesbury. This is complete for all except 8 Anglican marriages and shows the particulars of 84% of all Whitehouse marriages. The asterisked parishes are not included in the West Midlands BMD website. There is still much work to be done on the Birmingham marriage details file, launched on this website on 20th May 2009, but coverage up to 1875 is good.

Register Office and non-conformist marriages are a great problem, as an official GRO marriage certificate is usually the only way to get the details. Both West Bromwich and Birmingham have around 16% of these. It follows that contributions of scans of such marriage certificates from correspondents are “valuable” and very welcome. More generally, I am collecting the details from Whitehouse marriage certificates and church registers in all areas of the UK for the above time period of 1 July 1837 to 1911, so please send them in. The information is entered onto a Marriage Details database, so the certificate itself is not a “holy document” for me and it’s fine to scan it in two overlapping portions. This request applies (1) only to marriage certificates (2) only to marriages which are not already on the Dudley, West Bromwich and Birmingham files marriage details mentioned above and (3) only to the time period of 1 July 1837 to 1911 (England & Wales: starting dates in Scotland, Ireland etc. are later, but the 1911 cut-off remains).

Census transcripts

Astonishingly too, I still get family trees that have obviously been drawn up without any regard to the 1841-1871 census transcripts on this website. These are pretty good transcripts and to the best of my knowledge are highly complete.

The 1911 census

This remains primarily a referencing file - an additional place for correspondents to have their WFHC reference displayed and so enable contacts to be made. However, in a change of policy from 3 months ago, I have now decided to admit all Whitehouse-containing households. So, please send in “bosh shots”, making it clear that they have no connection with your tree. I am using the designation “NRA” (stands for No Reference Allotted) for these other entries.

More quirks

I wrote in March that the quarter had seen several oddities. The same is true of April to June. First, there was the problem in looking for a marriage of William Green Whitehouse at Birmingham St Philip on 25th May 1855, not present in the Latter Day Saints’ film (they failed to film four pages of a register) and when my colleague Karen Burnell kindly checked the original register for me, she found that the couple had never married. Amazingly, the GRO indexed this non-marriage - and Karen said she had come across another instance of this.

A couple of changes of name surfaced. The first is well documented - a Job Whitehouse who was born and died Job and appears on censuses as Job, but married in 1906 as Joseph, signing himself in that name. The second is more “iffy”. Correspondent 364 has been looking for a long time for Charles Whitehouse, a chimney sweep in Tamworth, who was born in Welford, Northants around 1830, but is absent from the 1841 and 1851 censuses. There were very few Whitehouses in Northants at that time and none known to be in Welford. His ingenious solution is that his ancestor called himself Charles Norman in the 1841 and 1851 censuses, for there is a chimney sweep of that name and of the right age, born in Welford, working for a Thomas Orme. Presumably he lost his father at an early age and was put out as an apprentice. The next step for my correspondent will be to search the Welford parish registers, which are not covered by the IGI.

The Sedgley Farmers Tree

The outstanding event this quarter has undoubtedly been the huge contributions made to the large tree of well off Whitehouse farmers in the Coseley area of Sedgley (WFHC 148 283 361 427 429 488). First, new correspondent 283 came up with an old family tree going back to 1640 plus a family list of births and marriages in the second half of the 18th century. Then correspondent 488 arrived with extracts from the two surviving, wonderfully evocative, diaries of Elisha Whitehouse, dated 1819 and 1825, held by her family. Finally, I was able to link into the tree the genealogy of the canal carriers, John Whitehouse & Sons of Dudley. The tree runs to 11 pages. It has occupied a great deal of my time, partly accounting for the queue referred to above.

West Midlands BMD

I wrote last time that I had been investigating “missing” marriages in the West Midlands BMD marriage index:

http://www.bmsgh.org/cgi/marrind.cgi?county=westmidlands

There were about 19 Whitehouse marriages that were in the GRO index under Dudley Registration District, but not listed in this local index. Eventually, with no help from Dudley Register Office (no response) or Dudley Archives (passed my enquiry to the GRO, who gave no response) and not much from the webmaster, I hit upon the explanation. These marriages took place at Ettingshall Holy Trinity and Sedgley St. Mary (at Hurst Hill). They don’t appear in the West Midlands BMD index because that index covers only the modern Dudley Registration District which does not now include those two parishes - they fall within Wolverhampton RD. This means that if you are seeking a birth, death or marriage within those parishes in the period up to 1911 and apply to the Dudley Registrar for a certificate, you probably won’t get one.

Help wanted

I have asked a couple of Whitehouse correspondents for help with a marriage at Dudley Archives and several at Staffordshire Record Office. I now need help in Birmingham Central Library and in Cannock, Walsall and Wolverhampton Local Studies, to make further progress with my marriage indexes. I do hope that there might be some volunteers - they will be very welcome. Just get in touch by e-mail and I will call you to discuss.

Best wishes to all readers,

Keith

WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE

Newsletter, 29th March 2009

Records take huge leap forward

The publication today on this website of two marriage details indexes is a sensational advance.

Between 1st July 1837 and the end of 1911, there were over 1500 marriages of Whitehouses in Dudley Registration District and over 1000 in the neighbouring West Bromwich RD. Together they make up nearly 30% of all Whitehouse marriages in England & Wales during this period. The new indexes include all the essential detail that is found on a marriage certificate. Coverage is just over 93% of all Dudley marriages and just over 70% of all West Bromwich ones. The indexes have been compiled mainly by searching in church records, but with the help of some marriage certificates for the ceremonies that took place in non-conformist churches and the Register Office.

I know that there are imperfections and hope to put them right before long. In particular the West Bromwich file contains relatively few entries for Handsworth and tackling this deficiency will be a priority. I want to thank Pat Molloy (WFHC 409) for recent help in improving some of the entries from films and fiches at the Sandwell Community History and Archives Service in Smethwick. Thanks also to Sylvia Peers (Member of the Birmingham & Midland Society for Genealogy & Heraldry) who helped me by visiting Dudley Archives and plugging a significant hole in my records.

The Whitehouse FHC is keenly collecting marriage certificates from correspondents, with a view to establishing similar marriage details files for other areas.

1911 census referencing file off to a good start

Another big thank you to all who visited the website and saw my appeal for entries from this census. Please contribute if you can. Contributions must (a) contain the Whitehouse name and (b) relate to your tree (or some other correspondent’s). The original schedule is greatly preferred. I have put the current referencing file on the website - it contains 17 households. As with the other censuses, this is a sortable indexed transcript in MS Excel 2003.

New correspondents

Maybe it has to do with the 1911 census or maybe it’s a diversion from the economic gloom, but this quarter has seen something of a tide of new people wanting to register. There have been 11 new registrations (reference numbers 045 130 349 and 481 - 488). All except one of them have been linked into existing trees. I have struggled to cope and the ongoing programme of digitising the trees of existing correspondents has inevitably suffered.

Quirks at the GRO

This quarter has seen several oddities. The strangest must be the case of the wrong marriage date. Pat Molloy (above) received a certificate from the GRO giving the date of a marriage of Sarah Whitehouse to Edward Green in 1861 as 23rd May, but the church register (West Bromwich St James) contained no marriage at all on that date. Moreover, the certificate contained a church register entry number that clearly related to the marriage of another couple. In fact, the Whitehouse-Green wedding took place in the next quarter, on 14th July, where it has been indexed correctly. The explanation for this oddity must lie in a copying foul-up when a copy register was sent to the GRO and someone had a lapse of concentration. A side-result is that another marriage was apparently never copied and so is not indexed by the GRO.

Another clag-up affected an 1845 marriage at Wolverhampton St Peter, where Ellen Whitehouse’s forename was miscopied as Eliza.

Anyone interested in the marriage of Elizabeth Whitehouse to Joseph Dudley on 13th August 1862 at West Bromwich St. Peter had better beware, as the GRO have indexed it as Whitehorne.

West Midlands BMD

I have been investigating “missing” marriages in the West Midlands marriage index:

http://www.bmsgh.org/cgi/marrind.cgi?county=westmidlands

There are about 19 Whitehouse marriages that are in the GRO index under Dudley Registration District that are not listed in this local index. The worrying aspect is that the missing marriages are not just isolated quirks, but form parts of significant blocks of missing entries. Apparently, the West Midlands BMD index has been taken from the index in use at the Dudley Register Office. If this is true, it means that Dudley RO is not a comprehensive source. To put it another way, if you apply there for a marriage certificate and don’t get one, you shouldn’t assume that the marriage didn’t take place. I have reported the matter to the West Midlands BMD webmaster and to Dudley Archives, who referred my enquiry to the GRO in Southport and to Dudley Register Office. More news next time.

A French birth certificate

Thomas Whitehouse, a Darlaston coal miner, went to France in the 1840s, where his son, Thomas was born. Here is the birth certificate issued by the Rouen registrar in 1844: French birth cert TW.pdf . Notice that neither parent was present and that it was reported by the midwife. In the circumstances, one can forgive the mangled version of Mangotsfield (a village near Bristol) as the place of marriage of the parents and the Frenchified version of the mother’s maiden name of Everett. The marriage date was also wrong, probably simply guessed.

French birth certificates are not easy to find, because there was no centralised registration system - one has to apply to every town hall in the area. Here, the WFHC correspondent was fortunate, as the 1881 census said Rouen, and it turned out to be accurate. A little piece of history came to light, because, apparently a large number of English labourers was recruited to work on constructing the Paris - Rouen - Le Havre railway line. Another census indicated that Thomas’ daughter, Sarah, was born in Paris. Alas, the birth records went up in flames in 1871, 8 million being lost.

Enjoy your genealogy,

Keith

WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE

Newsletter, 7th January 2009 with amdts

QUARTERLY RECORDS UPDATE

Progress has continued at some speed. This quarter has seen the completion up to date of the 1881 census referencing file, put on the website for the first time. Referencing files contain only those entries that relate to correspondents’ trees that have been digitised. Thus, this is in no sense a complete index. It doesn’t cover the many trees in my files that exist merely in paper form and, of course, doesn’t cover census entries that have not yet been related to any Whitehouse FHC correspondent. Nevertheless, this referencing file has 2614 names, of which 2046 are Whitehouses. This means that it covers more than a quarter of all Whitehouses in that census. There are 469 addresses, so the number of people in each household or extracted from an institution is on average 5.57.

Another novelty this quarter is the abolition of the NON-GRO MARRIAGES file. This was set up to provide a home for marriages between 1st July 1837 and the end of 1911 in which either the Whitehouse or the spouse could not be found in the GRO index. This database has been gradually shrinking, thanks to better detective work and removal of errors. At last, it has got to the point where there are only three missing references. These have been added to the main file GRO M 1837-1911 and classed as variants (symbol “v” appears in a separate column in the main file, which is a prompt to the reader to consult the GRO VARIANTS file to obtain the name as indexed or a mention that the item is unindexed by the GRO).

A good deal of information (spouses, dates, churches) has been added to the GRO MARRIAGES file in the last 3 months. I shall be commenting more fully at the next update due at around 1st April 2009.

The inrush of new registrations at the Whitehouse FHC in December, which has delayed this update, has brought the total for the year to 35 and for the three years 2006 to 2008 to 92. These 92 new registrations have the references 415 to 480, 107, 112, 118, 124, 126, 127, 128, 129, 138, 140, 141, 145, 146, 149, 154, 159, 168, 169, 172, 177, 216, 230, 266, 275, 343 and 347. Four correspondents were de-listed this quarter, since their data did not include a firm marriage or census reference of 1881 or earlier or, in one instance, because of a divorce. The numbers were then re-allotted.

It should be explained that as long as the person is still contactable, he is given the opportunity to make good the deficiency before he is de-listed. Previous correspondent 347 is a good example. I contacted him several times, giving details of the 1890s marriage certificate that he needed to make progress with his tree. Finally, I was so confident that the certificate would provide a breakthrough that I offered to do the further work for him. Alas, he claimed to be too busy to spend a few minutes on line to buy a marriage certificate. Maybe he just didn’t want to spend the £7.

In the last quarter, the files of 15 existing correspondents were put on computer under the RADAP (Re-indexing, Archiving, Digitisation And Paper-destruction) project. That brings the grand total completed to 291 out of 480, which is just over 60%. It seems great, until one appreciates that the influx of new registrations, the trees of all of which are digitised straight away, boosts the overall percentage. The more pessimistic statistic is that there remain the paper trees of 189 genealogies still to be worked on, re-indexed and put on computer.

E-MAIL ADDRESSES, POSTAL ADDRESSES AND TELEPHONE NUMBERS

Please, please tell me whenever you change one of these. Every quarter I spend time in detective work, trying to find correspondents who have forgotten about the WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE and have changed their e-address. Usually they are in a telephone directory, so a quick call does the trick. Sometimes I have to leave a message on voicemail and get no reply for days (and, in one case, I still haven’t heard anything after several weeks). Sometimes I have to send a letter overseas - at my own expense. Of course, none of these works when the person has moved and changed his telephone number and his e-mail address. Occasionally, I get lucky because someone else knows or because “Google” finds me a business address.

Also, please, please provide me with a telephone number. It really does remain private and is for my own use only. As stated elsewhere on the web site, I never give out a telephone number to anyone (not even a cousin), unless I have specific authority to do so. Discussion is needed from time to time and, curiously perhaps, people will tell you things that they have omitted to put in writing. Of course, another main reason is to provide a back-up for failed e-mails.

Not sure whether you are a registered correspondent or not ? If you have contacted me during the past 28 years, you probably are, but, please, just ask ! I shan’t mind in the least. Contact me by e-mail: see the Guild of One-Name Studies web site at www.one-name.org (look under Whitehouse).

THE PEOPLE WHO DON’T WANT TO REGISTER

Every so often, I encounter an “instant genealogist”. Such people don’t want to register, but simply want to extract information from me and move on. That is a pity, for two reasons. Firstly, my records are improving all the time, enabling me to create better trees. Secondly, link-ups with distant cousins can occur at any time and result in useful new information. Many are created every quarter as new correspondents get in touch and register. The system really does work. It’s all absolutely free. It has been for 28 years and I have no plans to change that.

There are a few who do not want to reveal their postal addresses. So, why do I make this a requirement for registration ? Here are my answers:

(a) Those who provide only an e-address are, in effect, unidentifiable, that is to say anonymous. Thus, often some of their information can never be verified, not even their own name. That strikes at the heart of good genealogy in which people are accountable for what they have written, encouraging them to be accurate and honest. With a postal address, someone can knock at the door and meet them. Of course, postal addresses are divulged only to connected people, usually distant cousins but sometimes those who are connected by a marriage. I have no intention of making them available on this web site or publishing them in any other way, except as a last resort when all attempts at contacting the correspondent have failed .

(b) They can change their e-address at any time and there is then no reliable way of getting in touch with them. Tom Anderson, believed to be in the United States, last heard of at kerr38@aol.com in 2001: if you are out there somewhere, please get in touch, because I have now found that your George Whitehouse born 21 Jan 1845 in Tipton links into a big tree that goes back many generations and is also very “wide”. Please quote WFHC references 145 226 287 421.

By the way, I’m not anonymous. My address is published in Registration FAQs and I will give my telephone number, which is ex-directory, to any registered correspondent who wants to call me for a telephone discussion. I do meet correspondents from time to time and am happy for them to come to my home. A little notice is advisable. Many years ago, someone came from Australia waited for hours on my doorstep when I happened to be in London all day and my wife was also out. I could quite well have met him there if only I had known.

EXPERIENCES OF THE QUARTER

She married young

Delving into the tree of correspondent 165, I discovered that one Hannah Whitehouse, clearly shown as aged 3 on the 1861 census, 13 on the 1871, married in December 1872, giving her age as 19. She can have been no more than 15, possibly only 14. This is the lowest well-documented age at marriage that I have encountered in English genealogy. However, a cousin of mine in Canada married at 12, when that was perfectly legal.

A great let-down

“FIND MORE ANCESTORS ON THE INTERNET” was the cover headline on the October issue of the monthly magazine “Your Family Tree”. We’d all like to do that. I was really interested to learn that “Findmypast” has produced an index of applicants for passports covering the years 1851-56, 1858-62 and 1874-1903. Here, I thought, would be an interesting way of finding Whitehouses who went abroad. Alas, reality did not meet expectation. The information given was merely name, passport number and date, no address or other details. One had to search year by year. The first two periods were relatively easy to search, yielding just 13 Whitehouses. I recognised “Henry B” (August 1854) as probably the iron master Henry Bickerton Whitehouse and “William M M” (February 1853 and September 1855) must be the solicitor William Matthew Mills Whitehouse. “Wildman” (December 1858) equates to Edward Orange Wildman Whitehouse, an inventor who lived at substantial addresses. The others consisted of two Roberts, two Selinas, one of them Mrs. Selina, John, David, Rosetta, Joseph and William. This was a search going nowhere and it got there even faster when I found that for 1874 to 1903 one had to search year by year in a calendar of every surname beginning with the letter “W”, arranged in date order. Needless to say, I found better things to do.

... and another let-down

Assiduous readers of these quarterly newsletters (yes, there are some !) might recall that I planned to trawl the Annual Reports of The Royal Surgical Aid Society, which were featured in “Family Tree Magazine”, August 2007, under the heading “Unusual printed sources”. They list subscribers to the society, which provided surgical aids to the poor. It turned out that these volumes are so unusual that they are not listed in the three most obvious places to look, namely the catalogues of the British Library, the Society of Genealogists and the Wellcome Library. I sent a small rocket to the editor for not making these checks and not telling readers where they could be found.

There’s a sequel to this. To her credit, the editor asked readers for help and one replied. She had found that there is just one volume of Annual Reports, for the year 1870, in the British Library catalogue under “Surgical Aid Society” (without the “Royal”) and I have now been to the BL and read it. The slim volume, measuring about 5 x 7 inches listed subscribers on pages 13 to 44. There were no Whitehouses and just 11 Smiths, 2 Joneses and 1 Williams. There was nothing to excite members of the Guild of One-name Studies, as few of the names were unusual. Indeed, some of these donors were anonymous and postal addresses were not always given. In short it was a “washout”.

Apparently, Annual Reports of the Manchester Branch of the Surgical Aid Society, from 1898 to 1948, are held at the Manchester Archives, but these are probably too modern to be of much interest.

Whitehouse industrialists

There are few famous Whitehouses. The most celebrated Whitehouse is Cornelius, featured in the section on patents in MISC EXPLANATIONS and below. He wasn’t an industrialist in the true sense of running a large business, but his pioneer invention relating to tube welding gave rise to many businesses. Three others, who ran large businesses in the West Midlands in the 19th century, are

Henry Bickerton Whitehouse, an iron master in Sedgley;

John Whitehouse, a brassfounder in Aston; and

another John Whitehouse, iron master, who owned the Ridgacre Iron Works in West Bromwich.

All four of them appear in the family trees of WFHC correspondents.

Trees on the web site

As many of you know, I draw my trees in Microsoft Excel 2003 in a “tall tree” format, with the oldest ancestor placed at the left-hand side of a portrait page of A4 (210 x 297 mm). The conventional form of chart is called “drop line” and has the oldest ancestor at the top of a landscape sheet. A problem with “drop line” is the huge waste of space, made worse by the use of specialist genealogical computer programs, which are also objectionable because the ordinary person (not having the right software) can’t read them. Well, I don’t mind receiving trees in any shape or form, so long as they are not digital files written in one of these specialist formats or in gedcom. In particular legible scans or print-outs are absolutely fine and if they occupy many pages, I just stick them together. I re-draw nearly all the trees sent to me in Excel and usually throw away the originals. So, minor untidiness won’t matter.

For new readers who have not seen any of my trees, I’m displaying today two samples:

Cornelius Whitehouse

John Whitehouse, the iron master of “Ridgacre”:

[Note: these trees have been updated, so the links have been removed, but they are available from the Index page]

It does take practice and a small amount of “trickery” to draw trees in Excel and I certainly don’t expect my correspondents to amend and return them. Corrections and additions in prose are absolutely fine, as I can usually incorporate the changes in seconds.

Strange goings on for “001”

I look with great affection on my very first correspondent, Eric Whitehouse, alas deceased, but, happily, replaced by his son. My correspondence with him began in November 1978 and his early contributions to creating an index of census entries of Whitehouses were invaluable. We had in common that we had contemporary ancestors in Birmingham, both called Charles, both in the industrial quarter, mine a brass founder, his a tool maker. They weren’t related, but we helped each other. Some 15 years afterwards, I was able to join a cousin, WFHC ref. 182, into his tree and she possessed a family photo taken in about 1856. What joy for Eric’s son and a wonderful advertisement for how the Whitehouse FHC can yield dividends for the patient. So there, you miserable “instant genealogists” !!

Actually, the tree originally produced by Eric, although extensive, was hand-drawn and graphically untidy, which is why I had been putting off digitising it. So I was very glad when along came new correspondent 478, with the news that one of his Whitehouse family had died in Sydney (Australia) in 1884 and that the informant at the death had been one R.E. Langford, cousin. He identified this informant as Richard Earnest Langford, whose mother’s maiden name was Whitehouse. So far so good. I had no problem in locating these Langfords as part of the 001 182 family group. However, the nature of the cousinship was far from clear, so I was driven to re-research and re-draw Eric’s tree, aided by a re-processed version sent by his son and improved records of mine. The mystery is not yet solved, but is an interesting “talking point”.

The 001 tree has several interesting features, one of which is the 1851 census return for Emma Whitehouse and John Harvey, which shows them as married, when the ceremony did not take place until November of that year. Her husband, Isaac, had died some years before, so the problem, if there was one, must have lain with John Harvey. Another feature appears on Eric’s son’s re-processed tree, in which he alleges that a 1930s marriage was bigamous. I am asking him for more about this. A third oddity is one that Eric and I encountered early on, which is that when Isaac Whitehouse, the tool-maker, married the above-mentioned Emma in 1839, his father’s name was given as John (his grandfather), rather than Charles (her father). Isaac was only 18, his father 48 and, to judge from the photo, had a commanding presence. One can imagine that the incumbent, busily writing in the church register, said to Charles something like “Name of father ?”, as a result of which he gave the name of his own father, rather than Isaac’s, i.e. himself. Here is the tree to date: [Tree updated: please access from the Index page].

The 1911 census beta-test

Some of you will know that part of the 1911 census was made available to interested parties to test, just for a few days around Christmas, when few of us had any spare time. However, I did explore the website’s capability of producing lists of Whitehouses.

To reproduce the whole of my comments would be too tedious, but to mention some main points:

- The site refused to produce a complete list for any of the three West Midlands counties, on the grounds that the number was too large (it ran into thousands).

- An attempt to break down the list into 20 searches of 5 years each hit problems.

- The search capability was generally poor, with searches by forename only being disallowed and the lack of the wild card facility so helpful in “Ancestry”. Searches by age were limited to plus or minus 2 years.

- The index layout was appalling, with huge amounts of space being wasted, apparently so as to make it as difficult and expensive as possible to print out a paper list. Editing the list into Microsoft Word proved very tiresome, with columns having to be deleted, font size reduced, spaces removed from cells etc.

I did find one good thing to say. I tested the incidence of likely mistranscriptions, using three names that don’t exist (as far as I know), with the following result, which is not at all bad:

WHITCHOUSE: 21 hits (probably misreadings of WHITEHOUSE)

WHILEHOUSE: 3 hits (probably misreadings of WHITEHOUSE)

WATEHOUSE: 2 hits (probably misreadings of WATERHOUSE)

I hope that some notice will be taken of my comments, but I am not holding my breath: doubtless the project has already passed a point of no return in terms of major changes in software design. The final version is supposed to be going public in 2009. By the way, there’s serious cost involved in obtaining images of the schedule.

What a long newsletter this quarter ! Next time, it’ll be a short one and, I hope, more punctual.

Very best wishes for 2009,

Keith

WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE

Newsletter, 25th September 2008 with amdts

QUARTERLY UPDATE

This has been a busy quarter, as I have begun work on establishing a fuller marriage index for Whitehouses, with all the important detail given on the civil marriage certificates. I shall be concentrating my efforts first on Dudley registration district. The results of this are yet to appear on the website.

Eight Lichfield diocese wills and administrations in the period 1725 to 1730 have been indexed and added to the probate file. The 1891 census of the Cannock area, covering pieces RG12/2220 - 2222, has been re-launched after checking.

There were 57 new correspondents registered in 2006 or 2007. They have the references 415 to 458, 107, 112, 118, 124, 127, 128, 138, 140, 159, 169, 177, 230 and 266. In the first quarter of 2008, I registered 6 newcomers, referenced 216 and 459 to 463. In the second quarter, there were 8 new registrations, numbered 146, 149, 172 and 464 to 468. In the last period, over the summer months, there were another 8 9 new registrations, numbered 126, 129, 154, 275, 343 and 469 to 472. Once again, some correspondents were de-listed, since their data did not include a firm marriage or census reference of 1881 or earlier. The numbers were then re-allotted.

The files of 15 existing correspondents were put on computer under the RADAP (Re-indexing, Archiving, Digitisation And Paper-destruction) project. Following an overhaul of my register and a re-count, the number of correspondents with trees on computer has risen to 264, which is 56% of the total. It’s morale-strengthening to have crossed the half way mark.

EXPERIENCES OF THE QUARTER

No laughing matter

A new correspondent (467) unearthed a strange event in which after his wife died, the widower married his step-daughter. James & Sarah Whitehouse, who lived in Birmingham, married in 1839 and had 7 children, including Sarah Jane Whitehouse, born in 1847. James, a metal roller, died at the age of about 45, probably at around 1862. His widow, Sarah, re-married in 1866 to Thomas Laugher, a wire weaver. The marriage lasted 20 years until Sarah’s death in 1886. Just ten weeks after that, Thomas Laugher married his wife’s daughter, Sarah Jane Whitehouse.

This wasn’t legitimate at the time, but, perhaps strangely, it would be now. This is because Sarah Jane was over 18 when her mother married Thomas Laugher, so Thomas was never in a parent-child relationship with the step-daughter.

I am no stranger to dodgy marriages, as my own ancestor, Charles Whitehouse, brassfounder of Birmingham and later gas fitter of Dudley, illegally married his deceased wife’s sister in 1844. Amusingly, her maiden name was Sly.

Whitehead rears its ugly head in the GRO index

Correspondent 154, whose native language is not English, has done exceptionally well to ignore my website and look for a suspected Whitehouse marriage as late as 1882 in the IGI. Worryingly, from my point of view, the General Register Office indexed it under Whitehead. I inspected the church register (Bordesley, St. Andrew) and found that the name was unmistakeably Whitehouse. After resolving a query about the exact date of another marriage there, I opened up the tree of correspondent 423 and realised that there might be a connection to tree 154. So I got in touch with correspondent 423 - thank goodness she had told me of her new e-mail address, as she had moved and changed her telephone number - and obtained the evidence needed to confirm the connection. A link-up was thus created. I tell the story to show yet again that the WFHC works and to remind all correspondents please to tell me when they change their e-mail, telephone number or home address.

Humbled in Bristol

My good friend Gary (362 & 414) has accidentally humiliated me by finding his Elizabeth Whitehouse in Bristol in the 1851 census, an entry not in my database. It seems that part of Bristol was omitted from the local indexes, probably because it fell into a hole between Gloucestershire and Somerset. I have carried out Whit* searches in “Ancestry” to plug the gap, so the 1851 census database is a little larger.

The vital clue was a sampler

A new correspondent added an extra sibling and an unexpected cousinly tie-up to an existing tree.

Geoff (343) knew of a sampler dated 1808 which had passed down his line of descent, but was made by a girl in another part of the tree. This and other evidence combined together to make a strong case for a Whitehouse marrying a 1st cousin of another name. It’s a reminder of how well the WFHC can operate sometimes, to the advantage of all who register with me.

The GRO Marriage Index

One thing seldom mentioned in these newsletters is the GRO Marriage Index database. Every quarter it improves in a variety of ways, through correspondents’ trees, by the kindness of fellow-members of the Guild of One-name Studies who send me entries and by my own searches. Sometimes the index changes subtly, as this last quarter when a Whitehouse was found who had been mis-registered as a Whitehead and a Whitehead was found who had been mis-registered as a Whitehouse.

It has been reported that the GRO’s project to computerise their births, marriages and deaths indexes and make them available on-line has run into trouble. The contract has been terminated. This is a great pity, as we are being deprived of ages at death before 1866 and the names of spouses before 1911. All this makes me pleased that my Whitehouse GRO Marriage Index is now a really valuable tool. Very often one finds that there are so many spouses listed that are not the right ones for a particular marriage, there is only one possibility remaining and a search in FreeBMD can provide a degree of confirmation.

“A place in the Sun”

Volunteers are still hard at work in the Guildhall Library, London, transcribing the names and addresses from the fire insurance policy registers of the Sun Fire Assurance Co. They have been working backwards from 1839 and have now reached 1803, although the index goes only as far as 1808. They hope to join up with the work done many years ago on 1775-1787. The latter project also covered Royal Exchange policies. I have ordered up some of the registers and thereby have been able to improve my index of Whitehouses slightly. During this process, I discovered an entry which had not been indexed in the Royal Exchange names index, but this joy was offset by failure to find one which was indexed, despite many guesses at the mistake.

Thank you, Caroline

Caroline Whitehouse (469) has been kind enough to respond to my recent appeal for help with the details of Sedgley marriages. Such kindness gives me a great boost. Is there anyone else who could help with certain other churches in Dudley and Tipton ?

Best wishes,

Keith

WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE

Newsletter, 1st July 2008

QUARTERLY UPDATE

This has been a quiet quarter for the WFHC, but three of the indexes have been considerably enhanced,

namely, those for the older wills of the Worcester Diocese, the “Sun” Fire Insurance policies, and Australian marriages.

There were 57 new correspondents registered in 2006 or 2007. They have the references 415 to 458, 107, 112, 118, 124, 127, 128, 138, 140, 159, 169, 177, 230 and 266. In the first quarter of 2008, I registered 6 newcomers, referenced 216 and 459 to 463. In this quarter, there were 8 new registrations, numbered 146, 149, 172 and 464 to 468. Once again, some correspondents were de-listed, since their data did not include a firm marriage or census reference of 1881 or earlier. The numbers were then re-allotted.

The files of 10 existing correspondents were put on computer under the RADAP (Re-indexing, Archiving, Digitisation And Paper-destruction) project. The total on computer stands at 225, still not yet half of all Whitehouse genealogies in my files.

EXPERIENCES OF THE QUARTER

Many thanks to Netta Hughes, a recent comer to the WFHC, who very kindly photocopied from microfilm the papers of eight grants of probate or administration at Worcester, from 1634 to 1729. Of course, I reimbursed the photocopying and postage costs. I have placed an order with the Lichfield Record Office for some wills etc. in the 1725 to 1730 year range. Lichfield have very sensibly decided to charge a set fee per will or administration, regardless of its length. Currently it is £4, which might seem high, but other record offices charge more.

The “Place in the Sun” project is a voluntary effort to index the policy registers of the Sun Fire Office, which are held at the Guildhall Library. It has been in progress for 5 years and now covers 1808 to 1839 which have been added to my own index. I was interested to see there two policies taken out by a Nicholas Whitehouse in London in 1814 and 1816. I reckon that he is the same man who was born in 1776 in Worfield, Shropshire, and in whom correspondent 468 and another enquirer have a passing interest. Others in that family were known to have come to London.

Approaches to me this quarter have been unusually varied. One newcomer found me from a very unusual circumstance. He had come upon a census containing the wonderful name of “Dulevingard Whitehouse”, who featured in his tree. When he searched the forename on Google, my website came up with the sole entry, the search engine having found it in the Newsletters “Backfile”. The name entered in the census return had been mistranscribed by Ancestry and should have been rendered as Anlevinyard, which was a phonetic attempt at Ann Livinia.

Another route to my services came from a tip-off by a fellow researcher in a library in the West Midlands.

Two requests for help came from people whose trees had gone wrong, unknown to them. I was able to set them on the right course. One of them didn’t have a marriage or census of 1881 or earlier and so didn’t qualify for registration and this reminds me to say that I will try to help with any enquiry. No one is ever left without a reply.

Progress in digitisation (“RADAP”) has been slowed by my activities in connection with the centenary of the estate on which I live. I produced a booklet, the research for which involved tracking down the dates of sale and prices paid for the houses, which were built in the period 1907 to 1914. In this I was aided by the Inland Revenue Valuation Survey of approx. 1910 and later years. In 1909 and 1910, an Act of Parliament brought in a tax on the betterment value of the land, the idea being to tax the difference in value of the land when a house was built and when the house was ready for occupation and serviced by electricity, gas, water, roads etc. However, it was applied to all land as it stood on 30th April 1909 and the “incremental value duty” was levied whenever the property was sold. This daft Act was eventually repealed in 1920, but before then a small army of valuation officers went round with notebooks and their calculations seemed to require ascertaining the total value of the property (not just the land). In most instances, the name of the owner or lessee of the property is recorded. Where, as in my case, the land was built on recently, the valuer would often substitute the price actually paid for his computation of the value. These notebooks, called “field books” have survived and are to be found at the National Archives, Kew under piece IR 58. Maps which direct you to the right field books are in IR 121, but it is advisable to obtain help to find the correct map, which is not straightforward. This little known class of record is in effect a directory of the UK for approximately 1910. I thought you might be interested, particularly if you can’t wait for the 1911 census to become public.

Best wishes,

Keith

WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE

Newsletter, 27th March 2008

QUARTERLY UPDATE

This quarter has seen the completion of two large projects. The first is the revision of the remainder of the indexed transcript of Whitehouse households in the 1871 census, by going through the counties recently added by “British Origins”. The second is an upgrade of the GRO Marriages 1837-1911, which has involved obtaining more spouses and churches for the Dudley and Stourbridge Registration Districts. As a result of this, 61.7% of the marriages now have an assigned spouse.

Two more small, esoteric records have been added to the Miscellaneous section, Great Western Railway Company share transfers upon death or marriage and a very few Staffordshire recusants.

THE “RADAP” PROJECT

This project for Re-indexing, Archiving, Digitisation And Paper-destruction is increasingly taking priority over most other WFHC activities.

As regular readers will know, I am destroying paper files and replacing them with a single neat tree, stored digitally and as a printout, which is being indexed to(principally) :

Pre-GRO marriages (this is a “referencing” file on the website)

GRO marriages 1837 - 1911 on the website

Overseas marriages (this is a “referencing” file not yet on the website)

The 1841, 1851, 1861 and 1871 censuses on the website

The 1881 census (this is a “referencing” file not yet on the website)

The probate files on the website

The term “referencing file” means a file which contains only entries that relate to correspondents’ trees and is therefore not a complete record of all Whitehouses.

There were 57 new correspondents registered in 2006 or 2007. They have the references 415 to 458, 107, 112, 118, 124, 127, 128, 138, 140, 159, 169, 177, 230 and 266. In the first quarter of 2008, I registered 6 newcomers, referenced 216 and 459 to 463. In case anyone is wondering about the numbering, correspondents’ files are being reviewed and those found not to meet the present day registration requirements, of a Whitehouse marriage or census date of 1881 or earlier, are being removed and the numbers re-issued. All have trees stored on my computer, with a paper printout.

Under the RADAP project, priority is given to the new correspondents. Last quarter, I warned that there would be a slow-down in digitising existing correspondents’ files. I am therefore quite pleased to have completed 19 of these, bringing the total to 207, being 45 percent (up from 39 percent at the end of 2007).

EXPERIENCES OF THE QUARTER

Improved 1871 census transcript

British Origins has been adding more counties to its 1871 census coverage, completing the whole of the 1871 census for England & Wales, with an index hugely superior to Ancestry’s. This caused me to set aside all other Whitehouse work and check my indexed transcript for all these added counties, which are Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Cumberland, Derbyshire, Durham, Hertfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Northumberland, all of Wales, except Glamorganshire, which had already been covered, Warwickshire and Westmoreland. Of course, Warwickshire, with 891 names coming up under “Whitehouse All variants”, was the biggest task and yielded 16 new households. It was pleasing that only one Whitehouse household in Warwickshire was missing from the British Origins index, one that had been indexed by them as Whitehorn and by Ancestry as Whitchose (picked up by a Whit* search, where * is a wild card representing one or more characters). The writing here was a little difficult, but Whitehouse seemed the best reading.

This is the point for half a public apology. Last quarter I grumbled at the poor quality of some of the images on “British Origins”. In fact, it is possible to zoom these images to a variety of magnifications, selected from a menu and these images are absolutely fine. It’s only half an apology, because the screen does not explain what to do and I found out only by right-clicking on the mouse to bring up a menu that included the zoom !

GRO Marriage index improved

I was “caught out” by one of my correspondents, who had assigned a church to a marriage in Dudley Registration District, causing me to go to the West Midlands BMD website, where I found that the volunteers had done a lot of further work since my last detailed scrutiny. This caused me to go through all the marriages in Dudley and Stourbridge Registration Districts listed in my GRO index (1837 - 1911) transcript, matching them up to those found in West Midlands BMD and then using Free BMD to verify the spouse names. It was very time-consuming, but worthwhile. Some problems resulted, not least the fact that more than 40 GRO Whitehouse marriages are missing from the West Midlands BMD index. Also, I would like to thank correspondent Andrea Hackney for making available to me a Short Heath (Willenhall) Holy Trinity transcript, enabling me to add details of about 20 additional marriages there. With other contributions and researches, the number of marriages with an assigned spouse has risen this quarter by 700 and now stands at 5495 (61.7%). Of course, eventually, when the GRO digitisation project has been completed (2009 ?), all marriages will be cross-referenced by spouses.

One anomalous marriage turned out to be of an Elizabeth Woodhouse in 1849 at Dudley St. Thomas, which the GRO had indexed as both Whitehouse and Woodhouse. Having verified Woodhouse from the church register, I removed it from the GRO index transcript.

Already, I am planning the next stage, which is to expand my marriage index to include nearly all the full details that are shown on a marriage certificate. A pilot exercise, for Dudley St. Thomas, is in progress.

Esoteric records

The MISC EXPLANATIONS file has been expanded slightly, now including the GWR Shareholders index, newly created by the Society of Genealogists. This isn’t quite the exciting or lengthy document that might appear from its name, because it relates only to transfers that occurred outside the stock market, i.e. chiefly upon, death, marriage or change of name. However, some of the more prominent Whitehouses have been identified in it and a WFHC reference assigned to them.

I had planned to trawl the annual reports of The Royal Surgical Aid Society, which were featured in

“Family Tree Magazine”, August 2007, under the heading “Unusual printed sources”. They list subscribers to the society, which provided surgical aids to the poor. It turned out that these volumes are so unusual that they are not listed in the three most obvious places to look, namely the catalogues of the British Library, the Society of Genealogists and the Wellcome Library. I sent a small rocket to the editor for not making these checks and not telling readers where they could be found. I did subsequently receive a couple of suggestions, but to my way of thinking the author of the article (John Titford) ought to have done his homework properly and not placed the burden on the reader. Somehow, I don’t think my letter to the editor of FTM will be published.

Thank you, Andrew and Jean

My public thanks to Andrew Clayton of Tipton, who has contributed Dudley material to my paper collection. He has been a kind and assiduous researcher, so I pulled his file out and digitised it. When I digitise files, I work on them to ensure that I index as many marriages, censuses and probates as I can find, often extending the tree sideways to cover the marriages of brothers and sisters and sometimes going further back than the correspondent. I hope I have “added value” to Andrew’s, although his was one of the better researched.

“I can't believe how much progress I've made since you emailed me, Dulcie and I'm so thankful to Keith... ... for putting us in touch with each other.” Jean Smith of Coventry is one of my earliest correspondents and has waited over 20 years to be linked up with her husband’s cousin, Dulcie. It’s a reminder that these connections can occur after 2 days (yes, really) or as long as 25 years (this has also happened). The Whitehouse Family History Centre started life in 1981 as the Whitehouse Information Centre. Jean was a contributor to the collection of records in early days, when there were few census indexes, so the thanks are mutual.

Contacting me

Please see Section 6 of REGISTRATION FAQs. At least some people manage to work out that the 10-letter surname is Whitehouse, the three initials are fhc and the supermarket is Waitrose.

Best wishes,

Keith

WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE

Newsletter, 1st January 2008

QUARTERLY UPDATE

This has been a quiet quarter as regards improving the records, because I have been giving as much impetus as I can to the RADAP project (see below). However, I have completed the first stage of checking the 1841 census for the West Midlands, covering the whole of Registration Districts 977 to 985, 996 and 997.

British Origins has recently been adding more counties to its 1871 census coverage and so I have started the big task of checking my transcript, using the British Origins index.

For a bit of light relief, I have extracted the Whitehouses from the new “Civil Service Evidence of Age Index”, which is on the “Findmypast” website - there were just three !

THE “RADAP” PROJECT

This project for Re-indexing, Archiving, Digitisation And Paper-destruction is increasingly taking priority over most other WFHC activities.

As regular readers will know, I am destroying paper files and replacing them with a single neat tree, stored digitally and as a printout, which is being indexed to(principally) :

Pre-GRO marriages (this is a “referencing” file on the website)

GRO marriages 1837 - 1911 on the website

Overseas marriages (this is a “referencing” file not yet on the website)

The 1841, 1851, 1861 and 1871 censuses on the website

The 1881 census (this is a “referencing” file not yet on the website)

The probate files on the website

The term “referencing file” means a file which contains only entries that relate to correspondents’ trees and is therefore not a complete record of all Whitehouses.

There were 57 new correspondents registered in 2006 or 2007. They have the references 415 to 458, 107, 112, 118, 124, 127, 128, 138, 140, 159, 169, 177, 230 and 266. In case anyone is wondering about the numbering, correspondents’ files are being reviewed and those found not to meet the present day registration requirements, of a Whitehouse marriage or census date of 1881 or earlier, are being removed and the numbers re-issued. All have trees stored on my computer, with a paper printout.

Under the RADAP project, priority is given to the new correspondents. The general aim to deal with all these and to meet a target of computerising the trees of “old”, pre-2006 correspondents at the rate of 25 per quarter. It is hard going, mainly because nearly all the trees have to be re-drawn and many need “armchair searching”, as I call it. Altogether, I have completed the trees of 182 correspondents, which is 39 percent of the total of 457.

There will be a slow-down during the next half of the year, because I need to complete the writing up of my Butler and McCreath family histories, as well that of as my own Whitehouse line. However, I shall give prompt attention to all new correspondents, as usual.

Experiences of the quarter

Genealogically stated, this has been a very disrupted quarter. After 24 years, I have re-decorated my study. This was no small job, as it meant taking down wall furniture, making good some damaged plaster, bricking up a fireplace, re-plastering a wall, making a new giant notice board (if anyone would like to know how to make one - mine is 5 ft 7 in long x 4 ft high x 27 mm thick - get in touch), mending a bookcase, re-hanging the wall furniture in different positions etc. These works produced a knock-on disturbance in other rooms and have generated a major re-organisation of where things are kept. Meanwhile, I have operating a taxi service, as our teenage granddaughter is lodging with us while she completes her GCSE exams. Her parents had to move to Wales rather suddenly when my son changed his job. All this - and other things - have curtailed my Whitehouse activities.

Last quarter I wrote about finding a gap in my records for the 1851 census in which the village of Shelford, near Walsall, had been omitted. It was not too surprising to find shortly afterwards that there was a corresponding gap in my 1841 census transcript. It seems that I had assumed that the local index that I used covered the whole of the area surrounding Walsall, when it did not. On looking it up in “Ancestry”, I discovered that all 4 households had been misindexed by “Ancestry” - as Whitchana, Whitchonse, Whitchouse and Whitchover. You have been warned. For many further examples of misindexing, see the CEN EXPLANATIONS file elsewhere on this site.

Another interesting discovery was that “Ancestry” have not filmed or indexed part of the 1841 census of Willenhall, in the area of Waterglade (HO 107/985/5, ED3). I think that they came upon a blank page and assumed that this was the end of the book, when it wasn’t.

It is most pleasing to see that “British Origins” has made some further progress with indexing the 1871 census, alas spoilt by the poor quality of its images. Many are simply unreadable. I am having to use the “British Origins” index to check my own database for completeness and then go to the excellent images in “Ancestry” to read the entry [see 27th March 2008 Newsletter for partial retraction]. As mentioned above, this is in progress, with Berkshire and Kent of these additional counties checked for completeness. Kent was all right, with just one additional Whitehouse in the muster for HMS Pembroke, moored in Sheerness harbour. Berkshire gave rise to 5 extra households, 3 definite Whitehouses and 2 which might be. Of the latter, one was born in Uffington, something of a stronghold of Whitehorns, but the writing is so poor that one cannot say definitely which it is. “Ancestry” indexed it as “Whilelanse” - no comment !

The keen-eyed will have noticed that my version of the marriage index for England & Wales (Whitehouse and variants) has acquired a net 4 additional lines of entry - 5 additions and a deletion. Three of the extra lines arose because some Whitehouses in the tree of correspondent 453 changed their name to Willetts and married under the latter name. My practice is to count this as a variant and include it. By the way, this family came from Cradley, but there is an entirely separate Whitehouse family connected with Willetts, in Northfield. The other two additional lines are for Whitest. This relates to a family from Cudham and Chelsfield in Kent, in which the parish register contains a bewildering variety of phonetic names, mainly Whitest or Whitehouse, but bizzarely including a Waterhouse, a Whites and a Whitehurst in the 1790s. The confusion continued right through the first half of the 19th century and even beyond. On the other hand, a marriage indexed by the GRO as Whitehouse turned out to be a Whitehorn and was accordingly removed.

Meanwhile, marriages continue to be “mined” for the index, which now contains a huge number of spouses. I should here just reinforce the point that my index differs from that offered by Freebmd. Freebmd just gives the total entries that have the same district, volume and page number in the General Register Office Index. For a spouse to be entered in my index, there must be (a) evidence that the marriage has taken place between the Whitehouse and listed spouse plus (b) the same district, volume and page number as in the official index. The promised new official index, which will give names of spouses for 1837 to 1911, has been delayed and is now scheduled for mid-2009. I’ll believe that when I see it.

Registration requirements

I have altered the REGISTRATION FAQs document, because I think that the list of requirements looks too off-putting. I have scrapped the need for a chart. Most correspondents fall into two categories - those that are rubbish at drawing charts and those that are highly adept at using genealogy programs, which occupy a lot of digital space and print out on reams of paper ! Generally stated, nearly all the information that I receive is under-researched for my purposes and needs further work. So, it’s better for me just to draw or re-draw the tree in my preferred format, “Tall Tree”, using a spreadsheet. I’ve been wondering about whether to put on the website some instructions for drawing a “Tall Tree” in MS Excel, so let’s see whether anyone reads this and asks for them.

Contacting me

Please see Section 6 of REGISTRATION FAQs. At least some people manage to work out that the 10-letter surname is Whitehouse, the three initials are fhc and the supermarket is Waitrose.

Best wishes,

Keith

WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE

Newsletter, 24 September 2007

QUARTERLY UPDATE

In the third quarter of 2007 I have done a lot of further work on records:

- the probate index has been extended from its present end in 1947 up to 1950, involving 185 additional grants.

- Irish and Jersey marriages have been covered for the first time

- Some Australian marriages are included for the first time

- the seven Whitehouses from Boyd’s London Burials Index (burial dates 1612 to 1817) are listed

- a major new index has been completed, of admissions to the county lunatic asylums in England & Wales, 1846 to 1890 with a few gaps

- the project to check the 1841 census of the West Midlands against the “British Origins” index has covered West Bromwich, Darlaston, Handsworth & Smethwick, Tamworth and Tipton (pieces HO 107/977 to 982)

THE “RADAP” PROJECT

This project for Re-indexing, Archiving, Digitisation And Paper-destruction is increasingly taking priority over most other WFHC activities.

As regular readers will know, I am destroying paper files and replacing them with a single neat tree, stored digitally and as a printout, which is being indexed to:

1. Pre-GRO marriages (this is a “referencing” file put on the website for the first time this quarter)

2. GRO marriages 1837 - 1911 on the website

3 to 6. The 1841, 1851, 1861 and 1871 censuses on the website

7. The 1881 census (this is a “referencing” file not yet on the website)

8. The probate files on the website

Additionally, I have just begun constructing a “referencing file” of overseas marriages and would welcome contributions from correspondents. The term “referencing file” means a file which contains only entries that relate to correspondents’ trees and is therefore not a complete record of all Whitehouses.

Currently, I have the trees of only 143 of my 453 correspondents (32%) in this form. They include those of the 51 “new” correspondents, who registered in 2006 or 2007. They have the references 415 to 453, 107, 112, 118, 124, 127, 138, 140, 159, 169, 177, 230 and 266. In case anyone is wondering about the numbering, correspondents’ files are being reviewed and those found not to meet the present day registration requirements, of a Whitehouse marriage or census date of 1881 or earlier, are being removed and the numbers re-issued.

BMD EXPLANATIONS

This file replaces GRO Explanations, since its contents have broadened beyond the GRO England & Wales and now includes material not connected with any register office.

Genes Disunited ?

“I had a hot match on Genes Reunited with someone who had an Elizabeth Whitehouse born in 1835 but the parents were not right. I told them about you.” This was from correspondent 031, who was very grateful for a small piece of detective work that I did in order to tidy up her tree: “This means that I now have my 16 grt grt grandparents. I had given up hope of ever finding Hannah's 1828 mother's maiden name.” Of course, I don’t sneer at Genes Reunited, because several people have found distant cousins that way. It’s a valuable resource. However, many trees require additional input in order to make connections with such relatives.

What the WFHC is all about

This quarter there have been two other excellent examples of how WFHC correspondents benefit from registering their trees with me.

Correspondent 288 referred to two sisters, Gertrude and Mabel Whitehouse. These matched with names in a “birthday book” inherited by correspondent 163 and so I was able to connect up the trees, with the result that correspondent 288 obtained a tree going back to a 1781 marriage.

It turned out that new correspondent 124 takes piano lessons from a lady that I know who lives just down the road. So she was able to drop in a copy of her handed-down manuscript tree. It contained a vital clue, in the form of mention of an Aaron Whitehouse as a brother of 124’s ancestor, William. Aaron had no dates and couldn’t be found in the IGI. However, Aaron is a very rare forename and when Aaron and Sarah Whitehouse turned up as witnesses to the marriage of a William Whitehouse, 124’s ancestor, I knew that he could not have died young. Sure enough, a marriage of an Aaron Whitehouse to a Sarah was found and their children fitted perfectly with the tree of correspondent 085. In the end a 6-page tree linking these two and a third correspondent (342) was constructed. The handed-down tree went back to a 1788 marriage, so 085 and 342 were delighted.

The WFHC benefits too

I was simultaneously pleased and annoyed when correspondent 452 had roots in Shelfield, near Walsall.

This correspondent included an 1851 census reference not in my file. On investigation, it turned out that there are 4 Whitehouse households in this village, all omitted from my indexed transcript. I still do not know how this error occurred, as I thought I had used both a local printed index and the BMSGH (Birmingham & Midland Society for Genealogy & Heraldry) published index for Staffordshire. It would have come to light sooner or later, since I have an ongoing project to check the whole of the 1851 census for Staffordshire in Ancestry. Unfortunately, with the RADAP project having priority, progress has been very limited. As a stopgap measure, I have checked the whole of piece HO107/2023, which covers Walsall and some outlying villages, in Ancestry, for omissions. There were no others, I am glad to say, but this check threw up some interesting misreadings of forenames by Ancestry. “Buche” is Phoebe, “Dulevingard” is Anlevinyard (registered as Ann Lavinia), “Ish” is Job, “Jerm” is James (not Jeremiah, abbreviated), “Mary”, aged 4, listed in the male (!) section of the Walsall Union Workhouse, is Henry and another “Mary”, aged 14, is poorly written but probably Fanny. You have been warned. If you couldn’t find it in Ancestry, try here.

The Pre-GRO marriages referencing file

This index of marriages in correspondents’ trees that took place in England & Wales before civil registration began on 1st July 1837 has been under construction for some while. As I keep explaining, to avoid misunderstanding, this is a “referencing file”. That is to say, it contains ONLY marriages on correspondents’ trees, referenced with their WFHC number. I have been adding to it slowly, as I have been re-indexing trees to the website. I have proceeded systematically, taking each tree in turn, because as records have improved, I have often been able to add more marriages than I have on my old card index or are evident from the existing tree. So far, the index has just over 200 marriages. I have been reluctant to put this “embryonic file” on the website, because I doubt that the general public of Whitehouse researchers will understand that it is highly incomplete, with only 32% of correspondents having been indexed or re-indexed under the RADAP project. However, I have taken that chance and uploaded it.

Contacting me

Please see Section 6 of REGISTRATION FAQs. At least some people manage to work out that the 10-letter surname is Whitehouse, the three initials are fhc and the supermarket is Waitrose. Regrettably, despite my efforts, the WFHC e-mail address is now being spammed and also attacked by virus-laden e-mails (intercepted by my isp before they even reach my own anti-virus protection). The latter probably means that there is a Whitehouse correspondent out there with my address in an infected computer. I urge all my correspondents to ensure that they have up-to-date virus protection.

Best wishes,

Keith

WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE

Newsletter, 29th June 2007

QUARTERLY UPDATE

The second quarter of 2007 has seen some further progress in improving the records:

- the quality control project for the 1861 census, previously completed for the whole of Staffordshire, has been completed for Worcestershire and rural Warwickshire

- the project to check the 1871 census of Staffordshire and Worcestershire sections, against the “British Origins” index has been completed

- a project to check the whole of the 1841 census of the West Midlands against the “British Origins” index is under way

- more details have been added to the GRO marriage index

THE “RADAP” PROJECT

The records improvement programme will be slowing for a while, because I have to get on with the indexing and archiving of correspondents’ trees. As regular readers will know, I am destroying paper files and replacing them with a single neat tree, stored digitally and as a printout, which is being indexed to:

1. Pre-GRO marriages (this is a “referencing” file not yet on the website)

2. GRO marriages 1837 - 1911 on the website

3 to 6. The 1841, 1851, 1861 and 1871 censuses on the website

7. The 1881 census (this is a “referencing” file not yet on the website)

8. The probate files on the website

Additionally, I have just begun constructing a “referencing” file of overseas marriages and would welcome contributions from correspondents.

The term “referencing file” means a file which contains only entries that relate to correspondents’ trees and is therefore not a complete record of all Whitehouses.

Currently, I have the trees of only 120 of my 450 or so correspondents in this form. They include those of the 44 “new” correspondents, who registered in 2006 or 2007. They have the references 415 to 450, 112, 118, 140, 159, 169, 177, 230 and 266. In case anyone is wondering about the numbering, a few correspondents’ files were reviewed and found not to come anywhere near meeting the present day registration requirements, of a Whitehouse marriage or census date of 1881 or earlier. A couple turned out not to be Whitehouse, but Whitehurst and Woodhouse. These earlier numbers (112, 118 etc.) were therefore vacated and used up for some of the 2006 & 2007 intake.

BIG UPHEAVAL AS CENSUS FILES ARE MERGED

Today, I took a hard decision - to merge my census files for the West Midlands, with those of London and all the rest of England & Wales, Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. They have become one giant file designated E&W. Now that so many people have broadband, these big files are more realistic. It will make searching simpler and will save me time when I update the files and load the new version onto the website. To achieve this, I have added county codes (STS, WAR, WOR) to (I hope) all the addresses in the West Midlands, as well as to 1851 London. If you find an address without a county code or with the wrong one, please let me know.

BACK NUMBERS OF NEWSLETTERS

Another change is that I have merged all the old newsletters into a single file, slightly edited. They are arranged with the most recent first and go back to December 2005.

Surprise, surprise

I’m quite used to surprising other people with a missive beginning: “Further to my letter of 16th November 1982, I am enclosing an improved tree...” The WFHC (previously the Whitehouse Information Centre) began in April 1981. Recently, it has been my turn to be surprised, by a correspondent who found a circular letter that I sent in 1980 to some Whitehouses in New York. His grandfather had responded to my circular and in doing so had preserved vital genealogical information. So, I linked him up with an English cousin and now a huge team of people is working on their family tree.

This is a convenient point to say that if ever anyone has been in touch with me in the past and they have a “serious” tree - or even a single event - in the Whitehouse name and it includes a marriage or census entry of 1881 or earlier, they are registered with me and are liable to be contacted. To save me trouble, it always helps if such people would contact me - even if just to say “Hello, I’m still alive” or “I’m now on e-mail”. It doesn’t matter if they are not sure whether they are registered: I can track them down in my register spreadsheet and provide them with their reference number.

Correspondent 441 and the missing Samuel

Samuel Whitehouse, a butcher, was missing from my 1841 and 1851 census databases. Assiduous researcher Jayne Sandles (441) found him on the 1841 census in Tettenhall, near Wolverhampton. This caused me mega-embarrassment, because he was not on my indexed transcript. To my horror, I found that my trawl of Sedgley (piece 998) had not covered the last three books, 16 to 18, which relate to the Tettenhall area. The mistake went unnoticed because this area is split between two pieces, 998 and 1002, the latter having been covered. As a result, I have searched the whole of piece 998, using the Ancestry index and the name Whit*, where * is a wild card denoting one or more subsequent characters. There was one further omission within the three unsearched books, but mercifully the remainder of 998 was complete. It’s a reminder that I am not infallible and it has hastened the launch of a project to check the 1841 census of the West Midlands using the “British Origins” database.

When it came to the 1851 census, Jayne showed that she is a fine researcher. She was convinced by directories that Samuel Whitehouse, the butcher, must have been living in Bilston Street, Wolverhampton, yet he was not in my indexed transcript, nor could she find him by using “Ancestry”, not even by searching under Whit*. A careful search street by street revealed an entry that was unmistakeably what she sought, but the head of household had been entered very clearly as James Whishine. I can guess what happened. Samuel, like many tradesmen, could probably write. He filled in the census form, writing his name as Saml Whitehouse, but the enumerator misread it and copied into his schedule as James Whishine.

The proximity thing and the balance of probabilities

Two trees of brickmakers were connected in this quarter, when the 1861 census showed Whitehouses from each tree adjacent in the 1861 census. It was just too much of a coincidence and a good tree could then be constructed, showing that they were very probably second cousins. Its probable correctness was reinforced by a strong naming pattern, involving Aaron, Moses and Stephen, all relatively rare names.

It reminds me to say that the standard that I apply in indexing and in drawing up trees is that the entries and the trees are correct on the balance of probabilities. This is a lower standard than “beyond reasonable doubt”. My reasoning is that if I include someone in an index who shouldn’t be there, my worst sin is to have misled someone and if I am wrong, other events will show this. On the other hand, if I have failed to index someone, I might have deprived researchers of a valuable clue. Whenever I feel some degree of uncertainty, I apply a question mark (query symbol).

“I can’t find my tree on your website”

Yes, I know. No trees are on the website. The long term aim is to put them on, partly for archiving purposes, but this will require 1 to 1.5 GB of web space, which, in turn, means using a paid-for web host. It would entail some disruption and I am reluctant to divert myself from more pressing matters, not least the RADAP project. Meanwhile, I will send any registered correspondent their own current tree or anyone else’s, so long as they have a good reason. For example, correspondent 095 does not believe that the tree that I have drawn is correct, because she thinks that “her” Job Whitehouse is the one which I have assigned to the tree of correspondent 212. So, I have sent her tree 212 and she can check it out for herself.

For the sake of good order, I re-affirm that no correspondent’s identity and address are revealed to another correspondent, unless they have a genealogical connection (or, in cases of doubt, unless both of them first agree).

“I can’t read the tree that you sent me”

All but a few of my collection of trees have been drawn or re-drawn by me in Microsoft “Excel” 2003. I like this widely available program, because it is so easy to alter and re-arrange information, join two trees together etc. MS Excel is part of MS Office and is widely used as a spreadsheet for keeping accounts and creating financial charts. Less widely known is that one can draw in it, using the cells for guidance to keep the tree straight.

Those who don’t have Excel can still read the tree, either by downloading an Excel 2003 reader from the Microsoft website or by installing the free “Open Office” suite. The latter is the better option, because one can then also re-sort the downloaded indexes on my website.

The Pre-GRO marriages index

This index of marriages in correspondents’ trees that took place in England & Wales before civil registration began on 1st July 1837 has been under construction for some while. As I keep explaining, to avoid misunderstanding, this is a “referencing file”. That is to say, it contains ONLY marriages on correspondents’ trees, referenced with their WFHC number. I have been adding to it slowly, as I have been re-indexing trees to the website. I have proceeded systematically, taking each tree in turn, because as records have improved, I have often been able to add more marriages than I have on my old card index or are evident from the existing tree. So far, the index has 177 marriages. I am reluctant to put this “embryonic file” on the website, because I doubt that the general public of Whitehouse researchers will understand that it is highly incomplete, with only 26% of correspondents having been indexed. However, I do aim to take that chance and upload it at the end of this year.

Contacting me

Please see Section 6 of REGISTRATION FAQs. At least some people manage to work out that the 10-letter surname is Whitehouse, the three initials are fhc and the supermarket is Waitrose.

Best wishes,

Keith

WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE

Newsletter, 1st April 2007

QUARTERLY UPDATE, 1ST APRIL 2007

The first quarter of 2007 has been another of good progress:

- the name has been re-registered with the Guild of One-name Studies and applications for registration

of trees at the WFHC have been dealt with promptly

- the quality control project for "1861 CEN WMIDS" has been completed for the whole of Staffordshire and some parts of Worcestershire, pieces RG9/2019 to 2069

- the project to check “1871 CEN MIDS”, Staffs and Worcs sections, against the “British Origins” index has made excellent progress, with Staffordshire nearly finished

- a draft of the 1871 census of Scotland has been added

- improvements in the GRO marriage index by the addition of some more spouse names and WFHC references

- the non-GRO Marriage Index has been greatly improved, chiefly by the finding of spouses with matching page references and transferring them to the GRO marriage Index

- the Probate Grants index for the principal probate registry (England & Wales) has been extended by 4 more years, so that it now covers 1858 to 1947 (dates of grant).

Lost correspondents

I would like to draw everyone’s attention to a small change in the Registration FAQs document. I am having trouble contacting some of my pre-2006 correspondents and now reserve the right to publish their last known addresses and genealogical details. People change their internet service providers and then I lose contact by e-mail. My next step is to try to find them by using the “Google” search engine. That sometimes works. Step 3 is to look them up in an on-line telephone directory. If that fails, I write a letter to their last known address. When my letter is returned or I get no response, I declare contact to be lost and mark the register “LC”.

I work to long timescales here. The case of tree 009 029 417 418 is salutary. My last correspondence with 009 was in 1983, when I could not help much, because of the inadequacy of my records then.

In 2006, I registered 417 and within a couple of days had connected her to another new correspondent, 418. Recently, improved indexing enabled me to see that 009 also belonged. Fortunately, a “Google” search enabled me to contact him after 25 years.

Please do not let yourself become an LC ! Put my e-mail address into your address book, so that when you change your e-address, you will be prompted to update me.

Following are lost correspondents:

064 Mrs. Eileen Barratt, c/o Ministry of External Relations, Private Bag, Wellington 6020 NZ

077 Mrs. Susan Dodds (wife of Trevor Newton Dodds): 24 Emerson Av., Middlesborough, Cleveland TS5 7QH

078 Mr. Gareth Harris, 32 Carshalton Way, Lower Earley, Reading RG6 4EP

118 Miss Clare Dunn, "Caerleon", 7 Saxon Ct, Leegomery, Telford, Shopshire

295 Mrs. Julie Whitehouse (wife of Christopher D. Whitehouse): 95 Bretforton Rd, Badsey, Evesham, Worcs WR11 5UQ

301 Mrs. Val Newman, 40 Clarke Avenue, Wattle Glen, Victoria 3096, Australia

They are long-lost except for 295 and 301, lost only about 5 years ago.

The big task ahead

My next big task is to make better progress with the indexing and archiving of correspondents’ trees. As regular readers will know, I am destroying paper files and replacing them with a single neat tree, stored digitally and as a printout, which is being indexed to:

1. Pre-GRO marriages (this is a “referencing” file not yet on the website)

2. GRO marriages 1837 - 1911 on the website

3 to 6. The 1841, 1851, 1861 and 1871 censuses on the website

7. The 1881 census (this is a “referencing” file not yet on the website).

Currently, I have the trees of only 90 of my 444 correspondents in this form. The 90 includes those of the 37 “new” correspondents, who registered in 2006 or 2007. They have the references 415 to 445, 112, 118, 159, 169, 230 and 266. In case anyone is wondering about the numbering, a few correspondents’ files were reviewed and found not to come anywhere near meeting the present day registration requirements, of a Whitehouse marriage or census date of 1881 or earlier. These numbers (112, 118 etc.) were therefore vacated and used up for some of the 2006 & 2007 intake.

I have not forgotten US censuses. The vast number of Whitehouses in Maine and New Hampshire is a deterrent to complete indexing, but I hope this year to make a start on a referencing file.

The term “referencing file” means a file which contains only entries that relate to correspondents’ trees and is therefore not a complete record of all Whitehouses.

Best wishes,

Keith

WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE

EXTRA NEWS, 4TH FEBRUARY 2007

The 1911 census will be released to the public, online and indexed, during 2009, i.e. 2 to 3 years earlier than expected. The National Archives has been encouraged to do this by a ruling of the Information Commissioner in favour of a complainant. Their project to improve and digitise the official birth, death and marriage indexes has met with technical problems. The new indexes are expected to start to become available on line in early 2008 and to be completed in 2009. This means that when the Family Records Centre moves to Kew in March 2008, some of the indexes will be held at Kew in paper form and some will be on line. You might think this a shambles, but I couldn’t possibly comment !

One good thing from our viewpoint is that ages at death for the years 1837 to 1865 will be given in the new, improved index. At present my version of the GRO Deaths index sorts into two sets within each forename, one set (1866 – 1911) with an age at death and calculated date of birth and the other (1837 – 1865) without. Care is needed to realise this and search both sets if necessary.

A project to improve the quality of my 1871 West Midlands census index for Whitehouses in Staffordshire is about half-completed, so I have taken the opportunity to launch an updated version. Besides the many corrections and re-interpretations, there are several additional households, found by searching in the British Origins index.

FURTHER NEWS, 9TH FEBRUARY 2007

I am re-registering the Whitehouse one-name study with the Guild of One-Name Studies, which means that I shall be answering all enquiries and will register new correspondents at any time.

QUARTERLY UPDATE, 1ST JANUARY 2007

The last quarter of 2006 has been one of huge progress:

- completion of the "1871 CEN OTHER" census database, the part that covers all other areas of England & Wales, Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, except London and the West Midlands

- improvements in the "1841 CEN OTHER" census database, the part that covers all other areas of England & Wales Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, except London and the West Midlands

- the quality control project for "1861 CEN WMIDS" extended to cover the whole of the Kings Norton registration district (2119 to 2127).

- addition of the years 1884 to 1911 to the GRO (England & Wales) births index

- addition of the years 1902 to 1911 to the GRO (England & Wales) deaths index

- addition of the years 1902 to 1911 to the GRO (Scotland) births and deaths entries

- improvements in the GRO marriage index by the addition of some more spouse names

- the Probate Grants index for 1858 to 1935 extended by 8 years to 1943

- addition to the census databases of the WFHC reference numbers of the remainder of those who registered in March 2006, plus some existing correspondents

Basic set of records established

It has been a great deal of work, but, at last, after just over 5 years, I have established a basic set of records for the Whitehouse surname. Births, deaths and marriage indexes for England & Wales run from 1837 to 1911 and for Scotland from 1855 to 1911. The England & Wales indexes run to nearly 39,000 names. The census records now extend across the whole of England & Wales, Isle of Man and the Channel Islands for 1841 to 1871 (totalling over 34,000 lines of entry) and a draft for Scotland is progressing alongside the Ancestry indexing project. Extending the modern end of the probate index has been hard going, with just extra 8 years (1936-1943) causing it to increase in size by a quarter.

"Surely they will reference my son." (Matthew Chapter 21, misquoted)

There is much still to do. Two "referencing files" are in progress, one containing marriages before civil registration began (pre- 1st July 1837 in England & Wales) and the other containing 1881 census extracts. These files are different from the databases mentioned above, because they contain ONLY entries that are relevant to correspondents' trees, with (of course) the WFHC reference number. In 2007, the main focus of my work will be to reference the trees of existing correspondents, in the GRO marriages and the 1841 to 1871 census databases and in the two referencing files. Of course, newcomers' trees will also be referenced, as they come in. The referencing files will be made available on the website when they have reached a meaningful size.

GRO Births Index

One never knows where trouble with these databases will strike next. On looking for an Ernest Whitehouse in the WFHC GRO births index database, I found that two entries were not sorting correctly in year order. Fortunately, I knew where the problem must be - a space being accidentally introduced at the end of a name. Excel regards spaces as characters and thus considers Ernest followed by a space to be a different name from Ernest without one. So, I have gone through the births, putting right an alarming number of similar errors, along with a few instances of a second forename being wrongly entered in the same column as the first.

Oddly, the marriages and deaths were free of such errors.

If anyone out there does find mis-sorting, or, indeed, any other kind of error, please tell me. Not reporting it is not considered kindness !

GRO Marriages Index

This index is amended frequently, as more spouse information, dates, churches and correspondent references are added. The present update is unusual, since an extra marriage has been added. It relates to an entry in the official GRO Index showing a Mary Ann Whitehorse marrying in the second quarter of 1838 in Dudley registration district. It took errors by Ancestry to make me realise that Whitehouse can be indexed as Whitehorse and this is what happened here. I located the marriage at Tipton St. Martin. All the "original order" numbers from 71 onwards have been moved on by one.

Probate and GRO Death index improvements

Shortly after the 1st January update, I introduced into the Probate Grants 1858-1943 and GRO Deaths Index an extra column. In this column, Calc Birth Yr., I have subtracted age at death from year at death, to give an approximate year of birth. These indexes have been sorted first by forename and then on the basis of this column. Unfortunately, because of the way in which Excel sorts, entries in which the Calc Birth Yr. is a blank space (there being no age at death to subtract) are shifted to the end, after the years. So, taking the GRO Deaths Index for instance, a search under the forename John will show two series of entries, one with a registration year of 1866-1911 in which a birth year is given and one with a registration year 1837-1865 in which it is not.

Official probate index under trial

Here's a little secret for my readers, possibly an "exclusive". The Principal Probate Registry is computerising its probate index - that's the index to grants of representation (wills and administrations) in those heavy printed books and (from 1973) microfiches at First Avenue House, High Holborn, London. Work is proceeding backwards from recent times and has reached grants for the year 1951. The new index is on trial at First Avenue House, where it can be used free of charge. Its big advantage is that it goes by date of death. Imagine trying to find a grant for William Whitehouse of 22 Burton Road, Dudley, who died in 1952. The administration took place in 1981 ! Its disadvantages are that one can search only 4 years at a time and that the details of the grant are shown as merely the page of the printed book with a red line around the entry. It's clear that my spreadsheet index has many advantages over the new official index. When the new official index has made further progress, I shall be able to use it to improve my index, by locating all the later grants of those who died in 1943 or earlier.

It will be interesting to see how the Registry plans to pay for this computerisation. My guess is that the index will be free to use, but that the cost of the documents will rise. This could be a good time to buy a will (£5 if requested in person, £8 by post).

Ancestry - a bouquet

To balance the Ancestry-bashing that has been a feature of newsletters and CEN EXPLANATIONS, here's an instance where they did really well. In the 1871 census of Durham, there's a family of Whitehouses in Stranton. The forename of the youngest is a dreadful scrawl, partly overwritten that looked to me like "Cha Hy", short for Charles Henry. I took my cue from the older son who was abbreviated to "John Ja". To my surprise, Ancestry rendered the name as "Matty", which it just might be with a big stretch of the imagination. Fortunately, he was born in Sheffield, where there are strangely few Whitehouses and by looking in the GRO Births Index, I was able to identify a Matthew registered at the right time in Sheffield. Well done Ancestry !

Best wishes, Keith

WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE

3rd October 2006

QUARTERLY UPDATE

The major visible events this last quarter are:

- completion of the 1861 census database for all England, Wales, Channel Islands and the Isle of Man

- partial checking of the West Midlands section of the above

- extension of the 1841 census database to include Channel Islands, Isle of Man and the whole of Scotland

- addition to the census databases of the WFHC reference numbers of many of those who registered in March

Completing the 1861 census transcription

About half of my genealogical energy this quarter has been poured into getting the 1861 census database (sortable indexed transcript) to what I call "theoretical completion". This term means that I have covered the whole of Great Britain, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. However, much of my database relies on looking up entries using on-line indexes (Ancestry, 1837 On Line) and re-indexing. In practice, neither of the starting indexes gives complete coverage of all Whitehouses when searched under this name or common deviant spellings of it, so the fear is that some Whitehouses have been missed by both. That's why the completion is "theoretical". Additionally, the 1861 census is notorious for its "gaps" - returns that have got lost: Ancestry has published a list.

I have been using both the "1837 On Line" and the "Ancestry" index. The 1837 OL index is significantly worse than that of Ancestry. They usually list about the same number of "hits", but 1837 OL gives large numbers of false positives - that is to say, what is indexed as "Whitehouse" frequently turns out to be another name. Thus, for Yorkshire, 1837 OL listed 208 Whitehouse and variants, Ancestry 202 under Whitehouse and Whithouse. However, 1837 OL gave 38 false positives and did not list many Whitehouses that were found in Ancestry. It would be nice to think that 1837 OL was so useless that it could be simply ignored. Regrettably, this is not the case. It does yield a few entries that do not appear in Ancestry under Whitehouse or the more obvious variants. Remarkably, it produced entries that I could not find in Ancestry, even by putting in the correct piece and folio reference. They simply weren't there, there being a gap of several folios in the return that did not appear to have been filmed (9 Kidderminster Court, Salford: RG9/2915 FO 36 SCH 191; 175-1/2 Upper Windsor St., Aston: RG9/2175 FO 122 SCH 173).

1837 On Line has recently produced indexes and images for the 1841 and 1871 censuses, so it will be very instructive to see whether any new entries result - but that has to take a much lower priority than other things.

1861 census of West Midlands: errors and omissions lead to new quality control project

In the West Midlands, my 1861 census database was originally constructed largely from local indexes and trawling through microfilms without any indexing aid. It has since been checked in Ancestry and 1837 On Line. As a result of this, I discovered that two areas had I had not covered: the Staffordshire part of Stourbridge Registration District (Amblecote, Wordsley, Kingswinford, Pensnett, Brierley Hill - RG9/2068 to 2074) and parts of south Warwickshire. Moreover, there have been many errors in other places, I regret to say. They range from omissions during trawling to wrong schedule, folio and even piece numbers. I have therefore launched a "quality control" project to check the whole of the 1861 census of the West Midlands against images of the census entries and have so far completed Birmingham, Aston, Meriden registration districts (pieces 2128 to 2190), the Sedgley and Dudley parts of the Dudley registration district (2046 to 2062), the Handsworth part of the West Bromwich registration district (2019 to 2021) and part of the Kings Norton registration district (2119 to 2125). These were the most vulnerable areas, as mostly they relied on trawling. This exercise has resulted in a large number of corrections and re-interpretations.

Improving the 1841 census transcription

There's no question that the best index is that of "British Origins", but they have been working only on the 1841 and 1871 censuses and many counties have not yet appeared. In the last 6 months or so, Origins has added Cheshire, Shropshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire to the 1841 coverage. Originally, the WFHC database for these counties had to be constructed from the Ancestry index, because, at the time, there was no other. Recently, I have checked the Origins indexes for these counties. For Cheshire the same hits occurred in each. In Shropshire, excluding Halesowen, one extra household was found in Origins, an entry that was particularly difficult to read. When it came to Yorkshire, Ancestry yielded 36 households, all of which were found in Origins. However, Origins turned up 12 extra households not in Ancestry. Two of these were rejected as Waterhouse and Whitehead, in 7 of the others Whitehouse was either clear or the best reading, leaving 3 that were genuinely difficult to decipher but in which Whitehouse was a possibility. Thus, on the most generous basis, 7 out of 43 Whitehouse households (one sixth) were not indexed findably in Ancestry.

When going through the Origins index for Lancashire (1841), I found another instance of missed filming by Ancestry. At White Chapel, Liverpool, HO 107/562 Book 1, Folio 4, the whole of page 1 was missed and this contains a Whitehouse. Even Origins is not entirely error-free. In the 1841 census of Halesowen it has made the spectacular blunder of indexing a family of the name Disley under Whitehouse.

Sorry to have gone on for so long, but many researchers do not realise just how bad some of the computerised indexes are. Thank goodness that in the heart of the West Midlands, where most Whitehouses are to be found, I have been able to use locally-generated name indexes for much of the 1851, 1861 and 1871 census databases on this website. It is my aim to produce the very best indexes that encompass all Whitehouses in the 1841 to 1871 censuses, using as many sources as I can. So, if you out there think I have missed one (it has been known), please, please tell me.

Alas, not every local index is reliable. I was delighted to come upon the "Sheffield Indexers" website, as they have indexed the 1841 census and it showed two Whitehouse families. Alas, they turned out to be Whitman and Whitham on the best reading. There is only one Whitehouse in my database for the 1841 census of Sheffield and that one is doubtful (Origins, Ancestry). This is quite a surprising result, considering that the Whitehouses were typical of the urban poor, who would go to large towns in search of work.

1841 Scotland

I'm pleased to report a positive development in Scotland, where Ancestry have produced an index to the 1841 census. This is not yet linked to any images. I have used this index, together with some "trawlings" of my own plus a search in "FreeCEN" to construct a draft database for the whole of Scotland. Among the Scottish counties, Whitehouse is found mainly in Ayrshire and Lanarkshire and the furthest north of the entries is of a farm just outside Perth, i.e. central Scotland. The draft will be finalised when images are available free of charge (which could take a long time). If any readers in Scotland could help me, please do so.

Developments at the Family Records Centre, London

Things are stirring at the Family Records Centre in London. It's an odd place, with The National Archives (TNA) hosting census and some probate records on the first floor and the Office of National Statistics (General Register Office) occupying the ground floor for the births, marriages and deaths indexes. The government has cunningly cut the budget of TNA, knowing very well that it can save money by moving the census facilities to Kew. (For overseas readers, the TNA building at Kew is some 8 miles out of the centre of London and accessible by a rather slow tube or train journey, followed by about 7 to 12 minutes walk). The move will take place by the end of 2008.

It's likely that the ONS will also leave the FRC building, given the project to digitise the indexes (not before time). The birth, marriage and death indexes will be completely revised, working from the original records. Marriages will be cross-indexed for 1837 to 1911, a huge boon. Thus, some of the work done on the Whitehouse Marriage Index on this website will be overtaken by the official records. Also, the maiden name of the mother will be given in the birth index for all years. What the ONS ought to be doing, of course, is linking the index to images of the certificates and making them available on-line, but I'm afraid that isn't planned to happen.

Indexing of correspondents' interests

I want to update you all on the situation. In March 2006, I opened the door to newcomers for the first time since October 2001. In all, there were 30 new trees to tackle, with the reference numbers 112, 118, 159, 169, 230 and 415 to 439. (The lower numbers are earlier numbers that have been vacated because the information provided by the original correspondent was inadequate). All these new trees should have been indexed for GRO marriages. If you think that yours hasn't been indexed completely, please tell me !

I have progressed to a second stage in which I am going through the new trees in numerical order and indexing them:

(a) in the1841 to 1871 census of England & Wales,

(b) in the 1881 census of England & Wales and

You will see (a) on the website, but databases for (b) and (c) are still under construction. I still have 431 to 439 to do and wish to apologise to those concerned for the delay. This task is being given priority.

As I go through the files, I am ensuring that every new correspondent has a tree which is recorded digitally and printed out. The printed trees are being stored tidily and will ultimately be archived

(printed to archive quality paper). The long-term storage of family trees is an on-going problem, but my intention is to create an archive in paper or digital form or both and deposit the trees in an appropriate library. That is some years away.

Some correspondents are producing very nice tidy trees, well researched. Others are not and it is taking me many hours to process each one, particularly if their genealogy is linked to that of an existing correspondent. Some are absolutely clueless about how to produce a nice tidy tree that prints to A4 paper (297 x 210 mm) - not exactly difficult. A few have submitted pedigrees of many pages containing extraneous information relating to other ancestral lines than Whitehouse. I shall have to take a firmer line about this and refuse them. Genealogical programs don't help a lot, unless they are printed in text form. Unfortunately, many people use these programs to make "drop line" charts - that's the name for the ones that start with the oldest ancestor at the top and have the youngest ranging across the bottom of many landscape pages connected by huge horizontal lines that extend so far that one has to tape, say, 10 pages together to make any sense of them. There's an awful lot to be said in favour of the "tall tree", in which the oldest ancestor appears at the left hand side of a portrait page. It's just a drop line chart turned through 90 degrees with the names re-arranged to the new horizontal, saving loads of space.

Another problem is that many trees are under-researched. Using just my own website and FreeBMD, I can often make progress. That shouldn't happen.

If correspondent 435 of "Witchend", or her cousin Jo, is reading this, your tree from William Whitehouse and Louisa Grainger who married 27 March 1831 at Sedgley All Saints, does not contain all the names on the census returns and so will have to be re-drawn. If you want the re-drawn tree and my comments, please provide a stamped addressed envelope or an e-mail address.

I have been re-thinking my policy about the 1891 and 1901 census. Without help, there's no way I am going to have time to check references supplied, still less begin another database. Of course, trees should continue to show everyone born up to and including 1901, but that is as far as I can go.

Work in progress

As mentioned above, I am giving priority to indexing correspondents' trees, starting with 421 to 439. I shall be working on the 1871 census of areas other than London and the West Midlands, so as to bring that to "theoretical completion". This is an urgent task, to enable me to proceed with further indexing of the census returns with correspondent reference numbers. The 1871 work will be interspersed with further checking of the 1861 census of the West Midlands.

I know that progress here is slow, but there is only one of me and I do try to lead a normal life as well ! . If anyone would like to help, I have a checking job that needs doing at the FRC in London. All who contribute are publicly thanked on the website.

Best wishes, Keith

WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE

2nd July 2006

QUARTERLY UPDATE

The major visible events this quarter are:

- completion of the 1841 census database with the aid of the "Ancestry" index

- getting 1861 other (other = everywhere except London and the West Midlands) well under way

- moving to a new website.

However, I have failed to make significant progress in adding WFHC reference numbers to the census databases and I apologise to those who registered in March that I have been unable to do this yet for their trees. Please bear with me.

Here in the south east of England where I live, we have had an exceptionally dry and sunny June. I have therefore been busy painting the outside of the house and so genealogy has been at a standstill. Today it was 35.5 degrees Celsius (96 degrees Fahrenheit) in the sun. I started painting with undercoat at 5.25 a.m. and put a coat of gloss on at 9.30 a.m. I am pleased to report that the family is all well and my son has just distinguished himself by completing his exams to qualify as an actuary. He did about half the exams some years ago, gave up the idea of qualifying and became an IT project manager. Seeing so many bright people younger than him entering the IT field, he took the other half of the actuarial exams. Despite the distractions of looking after 4 children, he managed to get his head down and do the work. I am very proud of him.

Those new to the WFHC will find much information in the April newsletter, still available to download.

Best wishes, Keith

WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE

4th April 2006

SUCCESSFUL RE-OPENING DURING MARCH 2006

NEXT RE-OPENING JANUARY 2007

The WFHC re-opened for the month of March 2006, which resulted in 28 new genealogies, referenced as 112, 118, 159, 169, 230 and 415 to 437. Many had seen the article in the December issue of "The Midland Ancestor", a few had come upon the website and some others were invited by me to register after they had listed a Whitehouse interest in "The Midland Ancestor". Correspondents did very well, all making a good effort to comply with the rules for registration, overall with very few items omitted.

The WFHC is now closed for new registrations, but will remain open to all registered correspondents for enquiries, updates etc. The next opportunity for registration will be for the month of January 2007. The same rules will apply. Make a note in your calendar or diary for 31st December 2006.

FUTURE PLANS OF THE WFHC

- to continue with quarterly newsletters on or about 1st January, April, July and October

- to maintain the probate indexes, which are potentially of enormous value

- to complete the 1841, 1851, 1861 and 1871 census indexes for England & Wales to a high standard of accuracy and improve coverage of Scotland

- to annotate further the census, marriage and probate indexes with the references of correspondents

- to improve the GRO index files, especially for marriages, and to extend births and deaths.

- to index the marriages of correspondents which took place before civil registration

- to index the 1881 census references of correspondents

- to create an on-web register of the names of correspondents and an off-web register of their contact details

- to index some of the US censuses

QUARTERLY UPDATE

This has been the most energetic quarter in the history of my efforts to co-ordinate Whitehouse genealogy. From the website viewpoint, the most notable achievements are:

- the new GRO marriage index, with many more matches of spouses to Whitehouses

- overhaul of all the indexes to get rid of the code system for variants, v7, v12, v24 etc. and the abbreviations for Registration Districts in the West Midlands

- successful checks of the 1841 census for the West Midlands

- addition of Northamptonshire to the 1841 census of other areas

- opening of the WFHC to new correspondents after 4½ years

- a clear way forward for the WFHC

- decision to change my e-mail address and semi-encrypt it to deter spammers

Away from the web, other things have been going on. At last, I have digitised the Register of Correspondents. The public part of this (names, but no contact details) will be put on the website later this year.

Work has been steaming ahead on the 1861 and 1871 census. I have now completed the whole of London for both years, as draft paper slips. For 1861, I have used the "Ancestry" interface to read the scans, while checking the results from the "Ancestry" index against the 1837online index. Needless to say, each index gave results that the other did not.

The 1851 census has also made good progress on paper, with the result that the whole of England & Wales has been covered. It gave me great pleasure to find that the Manchester & Lancashire FHS have re-transcribed the flood-damaged parts of the 1851 census of Manchester and a few other towns in Lancashire. Some books were damaged by a flood in the Public Record Office before they could be filmed. A UV light technique was used to enhance the writing in the books. Several Whitehouse entries were found.

Interesting things are happening with the 1841 census. British Origins has been filming and indexing it, but their progress latterly has been very slow. I have been keeping pace with it. Meanwhile "Ancestry" have filmed it and have talked about going on-line with it in a couple of months. Poor though the "Ancestry" indexes are, they are a great deal better than none at all, so I am hopeful that it will not be too long before I can complete the London area.

All this means, of course, a great deal of keyboarding to put these paper transcripts onto Excel spreadsheets.

Some moments of interest occurred in enhancing the GRO Marriage Index. There are five marriages where the page numbers for the groom and bride did not agree, differing by one digit. Protracted correspondence with the GRO in Southport, Lancashire, failed to move the mean so-and-sos to investigate and tell me which reference was wrong. They would rather waste time thinking of ways to say "no" than spend a few minutes doing it ! So I did my Sherlock act and sorted it out for them.

The GRO Marriage Index on the website now contains only the correct numbers. However, I did manage to persuade them to agree to a correct a homosexual marriage in the 4th quarter of 1903, where Harry or Henry Whitehouse married James Wakelam. The Whitehouse was Amy. So my website shows only the correct version.

Regular readers of this website will notice the new file of Non-GRO marriages, a sort of dustbin for any marriage that I could not find in the GRO indexes. There used to be many more, but with the aid of FreeBMD and a bit more imagination on my part, they have been reduced to 21. It has been quite a revelation to me to discover that many marriages which I thought had never reached the GRO did in fact arrive, but have been lying there mis-indexed. Take, for example, the marriage of Mary Whitehouse to Thomas Cartmail which is in the parish register of Walsall St. Matthew for 8th July 1838. There was no difficulty in identifying Mary in the GRO index, but Thomas ? I tried Cartmale, Cartwail, Carpmail, Carpmael, Gartmail, Cortmail…. As a final act of desperation I tried Curtmail and there it was.

Even more diligent readers will notice the mysterious file "FREQUENCY…" on the annex website. This contains a slightly revised version of a paper that I had published in 1998 and shows the frequency of the name Whitehouse and various ways of measuring it. I have been telling correspondents for some years that in the Dudley, Tipton and West Bromwich areas it has the same frequency as does Williams in the whole of England & Wales, Williams being the 3rd commonest surname. In the Cheslyn Hay and Great Wyrley areas, it is on a par with Smith and Jones.

Writing of surname frequency, I wonder if anyone can explain to me the mysterious website www.taliesin-arlein.net/names . It is said to be a 1998 database of 270,000 surnames in England & Wales, the entry qualification for which is that there must be at least 5 entries of the name. It enables one to obtain a ranking for any given surname. Whitehouse was ranked 459, with 15,893 entries. According to the Nottinghamshire FHS Journal, Vol. 11 No. 5, October 2004, the database comes from names of people registered with the National Health Service, but the website does not say this. Births are continually added, but deaths are not weeded out. Multiplying by 0.93 gives an estimate of the population having the name. I'll be returning to this topic in a later newsletter.

I am afraid that all this bread-and-butter stuff (censuses, GRO marriages) will disappoint those who are stuck around 1800 and hope that I will conjure up some obscure records that will help them. I do have it mind, but very few records identify Whitehouses in enough detail to be interesting. I have downloaded the few Whitehouses, all in London, in the newly created indexes to the Sun Fire Office registers for the period 1816 to 1834 and will be adding these to the Annex website.

The semi-encryption of my new e-mail address has caused some comment. One defeated person sent a letter by post, another, sensibly, did a Google search for the supermarket and worked it out. Of course, I am sorry for any irritation and anyone who can offer me a nice free encryption program that they have tested with Windows XP and can recommend will be welcome. I have asked the Guild of One-name Studies to cancel my previous address ending in "one-name.org". Putting it on the website has caused me no end of spam. I hope for better things from my new address (see link on Index page).

I have been thinking of putting my telephone number on the website, again in a semi-encrypted form, having discovered that it is the product of two large prime numbers. However, I rather like my telephone number and do not want to resort to elaborate arrangements to filter annoying calls. So, I'll park that one, but any registered correspondent who would like a telephone discussion can always e-mail me to request one.

Following the successful influx of new correspondents, I now have a big indexing task ahead of me and I hope that all such of you reading this will be patient. Viv Turner (435) will have to be very patient, as she didn't enclose a stamped addressed envelope or give an e-mail address with her letter. I have registered her genealogy and indexed the marriages and will write when I have completed the indexing.

Existing correspondents who want to be very helpful should please make a nice clear chart of their family history in the Whitehouse name, which is NOT in a Gedcom format (send text or print and scan) and which is printable to A4 in a neat and tidy presentation. Also wanted are census references, including the 1881 census. References to family stories and the 1891 and 1901 censuses should please be added as footnotes on the chart. This is part of the "clear way forward". I shall be storing such charts in digital and printed-out form. Correspondence will not be kept. Paper files will be disposed of.

Some will recall having sent in "Word pedigrees", an idea that I was pursuing in my January 2002 paper in Journal of One-name Studies. It was unsuccessful. Not many people responded. Many mistakes were made, including several by me ! At that time, I saw it as a temporary solution to a huge indexing problem. I always knew that indexing marriages was the key to identifying genealogies and now that my GRO marriage index has improved so much, it is even more true. I shall be proceeding with the pre-civil registration marriages of correspondents as soon as I can find the time. It would enable me to dispose of two shoe-boxes of index cards, devoted entirely to spouses.

By the way, it is amazing just how many people do not produce charts - some, it seems, find the task beyond them. I'll be returning to this theme in a future newsletter.

I'm pleased to say that my wife and I are well and that the grandchildren suffer from only the usual passing colds and tummy bugs. Robert, the only male, has been playing the organ and trombone at school, in public, a terrific advance for a nervous child. Science is his thing.

Best wishes

Keith

WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE

27th December 2005 Updated 6th & 24th January 2006

Happy New Year Everyone,

THE CENTRE IS OPENING AGAIN !

The Centre is opening again on a limited basis, as explained below.

Firstly, it will re-open to admit new registrations of Whitehouse genealogies for a period of one month only, from 1st to 31st March 2006. As many of you know, the Centre has been closed for over 4 years, since October 2001. The purpose of registering is this, that you will then be given a WFHC number, which will be entered in the census, marriage and probate indexes available on the web. This will allow others with the same or a related genealogy to contact you, without your being bothered by irrelevant enquirers.

Secondly, the Centre will open on 1st March and remain open indefinitely thereafter, for the purpose of making contacts. It has been decided NOT to put addresses in an on-line directory on the website, but that all contacts will be arranged through the Centre. (This is a change from the arrangement set out in my 1st October 2005 newsletter). It is expected that most of the contacts will be made in March or April 2006, because existing correspondents have already been "matched" to each other. These contacts will be between a new correspondent who registers in March and either another such new correspondent or an existing one. However, some existing correspondents will probably have changed their contact details, so there might well be a time lag of several months before some of the contacts can be arranged. It is for this reason that the Centre will remain open for arranging contacts for a long time after March 2006.

After 31st March 2006, the Centre will be closed for new registrations. When I have coped with the expected flood of new registrations, I will consider whether to open again for additional new registrations.

The Centre will remain closed for casual enquiries.

The rules for new registrations will be as follows:

[This section has been omitted, as it is superseded by the Registrations FAQs file]

FUTURE PLANS OF THE WFHC

- to continue with quarterly newsletters on or about 1st January, April, July and October

- to maintain the probate indexes, which are potentially of enormous value

- to complete the 1841, 1851, 1861 and 1871 census indexes for England & Wales to a high standard of accuracy and improve coverage of Scotland

- to annotate further the census, marriage and probate indexes with the references of correspondents

- to improve the GRO index files, especially for marriages and to extend births and deaths.

- to index the marriages of correspondents which took place before civil registration

- to index the 1881 census references of correspondents

- to create an on-web register of the names of correspondents and an off-web register of their contact details

- to index some of the US censuses

OTHER RECENT NEWS

It has been a tumultuous year in genealogy, owing to a big increase in indexing on-line. There is so much that I would like to do to improve my Whitehouse records, so little spare time in which to do it.

During much of 2005, I have been concentrating on expanding my sortable indexed transcripts of the 1841 to 1871 censuses. I have re-written the file CEN EXPLANATIONS, which shows the state of affairs to date. There is one very important message that I want to get across. It is that the "Ancestry" indexing of Whitehouses is of a very poor standard. If you have failed to find your Whitehouse ancestor in "Ancestry", it's quite likely that he or she has been mis-indexed. It's well worth trying my indexes on this website.

When using the "Ancestry" indexes, I am now routinely searching Whit*, where * is a "wild card" representing one or more characters. This search therefore picks up Whitacre, Whitcombe, White, Whitehair, Whitehead, Whitehorne etc. along with Whitehouse. The most worrying names are those which commonsense says are very unlikely, such as "Whitchoun" and "Whitchouse". Of course, I can't check every entry thrown up by the Whit* search, but I do look at the image for all those names which have been known to be mis-readings of Whitehouse or which are highly improbable names of about the same length.

It would be nice to think that the Whit* search, although very tedious, will guarantee my picking up all the Whitehouses. Alas, some of the mis-readings do not begin with these four letters. A few are so strange that no reasonable search in "Ancestry" would ever find them. I am so glad, therefore, that a significant proportion of my census records has come from local name indexes or trawling (reading through films, unaided by any index).

Another strength of my indexes lies in the place of birth. I try hard to read this sensibly, frequently looking up the names of villages and hamlets. Correspondent 097 will see what I mean, when I mention that "Ancestry" have indexed her Alfred Whitehouse on the 1871 census as born in Waberthwaite, Surrey. Waberthwaite, if it existed at all, would be a Lake District name. He was actually born in Walworth, now an area of south east London, near the Elephant & Castle and this is reasonably clearly written in the census return.

This does not mean that the "Ancestry" indexes are useless. After all, they cover areas for which no local name indexes exist. Trawling is never a reliable method and I am using on-line indexes to check the accuracy of the trawls.

Some people must wonder whether transcribing the whole household, servants and all, is worthwhile. You just never know, as correspondent 070 will testify, because the future wife of Robert Stephen Whitehouse, the cotton mercer, can be found listed among the very many apprentices and servants in the 1871 census of his establishment in Leamington Spa.

In the immediate future, a priority is to continue keeping pace with the "British Origins" indexing of the 1841 census. This has been proceeding slowly, working roughly diagonally across southern and middle England, from Cornwall to Lincolnshire, with new counties being added every month or two. The quality of the "British Origins" indexing is high. They have covered the three counties of the West Midlands, where most Whitehouses are found. The WFHC index to the 1841 census of the West Midlands was compiled partly from local indexes and partly from trawling. I have started using the "British Origins" index to check the trawled parts for omissions and have so far completed Dudley and Sedgley parishes. (There were several omissions, as expected).

The WFHC index to the 1851 census has benefited from published paper or fiche surname indexes, with only a very little trawling. However, the CEN OTHER file (covering everywhere except the West Midlands and London) is weak in places, so I have made a start on supplementing that by using the "Ancestry" indexes. The worst areas are probably Yorkshire and Kent, so I have started there and will be up-grading that file in the first quarter of 2006.

Another priority is to improve the GRO Marriage Index. This is a big task, for the idea is to include churches where the marriage took place and the date. Also, there are many more spouse names to add. This improved index will be an immensely powerful tool, for it will enable searchers either to find the marriage or to eliminate a large number of possibilities from their list of candidates. Currently, 1837 to 1881 has been completed. 1902 to 1911 is also available in this form, but some additions are in the pipeline.

You'll have seen WFHC references in the last column of the census transcripts. Only a small portion of these has resulted from any systematic attempt at entering them. I intend to start going through the paper files in an organised way, marking up the digital files with references. This will be an ongoing project during 2006, but it is a huge task. Therefore, any registered correspondent who wants to help by pointing out where his or her reference is missing and needs to be inserted in the digital files (census, marriage, probate) will be very well received. Please also contribute 1881 census references, as I shall shortly be establishing a file for those. I need at least the piece and folio number.

Best wishes

Keith