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Month: September 2019

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Genealogy Cruises – Week 1 – The Adventure Begins and Ancestry Breaking News!

genealogy cruise

This week, I have been lucky enough to be cruising the Mediterranean! However, it has not been all about sitting by the pool with umbrella-decorated drinks. In fact, I am yet to do that, the schedule is packed! Yes, it’s another genealogy conference. No, really.

Genealogy cruises

Unlock The Past have been running genealogy cruises for several years now to various destinations and following different themes. This is the first time I have managed to take part. This cruise is around the Mediterranean for 14 days. The topics are quite varied, but the themes are broadly research in the British Isles and Europe, DNA and writing. All of these are very relevant to my research, so I have been looking forward to this conference hugely!

So how do genealogy cruises work?

The days you are at sea (including the evening of departure), lectures are held all day. We all dine together at the same time then return to lectures. This is no junket! It is concentrated doses of amazing information and discussion.

No lectures are held while the ship is docked in port – at those times we are free to explore and we emerge, blinking, into the sunshine! This is actually very helpful, I’m sure it gives our brains time to digest the previous presentations in the background as we walk the streets of the city we are in. We return to the ship, have dinner and back to lectures afterwards.

Week 1 highlights

We have had lots of fascinating presentations so far from some great speakers, and I’ve decided to give an overall summary next week of what was covered, especially since some of them are part of a series as yet not completed. But mostly because…drumroll…there has been some breaking news I’d like to share while it is hot off the press! This news had a roomful of genealogists at the end of a long day of lectures oohing and aahing in excitement. We were packing up to go to dinner when one of our speakers, Michelle Patient, rushed into the room after a teleconference with Ancestry to tell us about some new developments.

What is Ancestry up to?

Firstly, the search page will now contain the ‘What’s New’ section in the top right corner to make new additions and updates to record sets more visible and transparent.

Secondly, search results will be able to be filtered by date and place to make it easier to find the right ones amongst the huge numbers of results generated. This is in beta, so will only apply initially to births, marriages and deaths.

Thirdly, the positively clunky mobile app is getting a long overdue makeover to make it, well, useable! I think I actually squealed at this announcement!

And last but not least, there will be further tweaks to Thrulines. You will now be able to see if new matches have been added – ‘updated’ will appear in the top right corner of the ancestor tile. If a new Thruline is generated for an ancestor, ‘new’ will appear in the top right corner. You will also be able to see how many Thrulines an ancestor has by hovering over their tile.

These changes will be rolled out during October, so look out for them. I think they will definitely improve our user experience. These changes have come from feedback provided to Ancestry, who have been actively working with genealogists around the world to make the site more user friendly. Kudos to them for this, I think these improvements are a very positive step in the right direction!

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Genealogical Serendipity

Have you ever repeatedly hit a genealogical brick wall over and over again and despaired of ever breaking through it? Have you ever felt as though your ancestors would let you know about their lives when they were good and ready and not a moment before? And have you then suddenly had an amazing coincidence that has seen those brick walls tumble? That’s genealogical serendipity, and it can feel downright spooky!

Ever driven past an overgrown cemetery in the middle of nowhere and decided to stop and take a look? Serendipity is when you find a grave with a surname you recognise and it turns out to be someone from a long lost branch of the family tree! That’s genealogical serendipity.

Genealogical Serendipity Strikes My Tree

When I moved to Australia with my parents as a child, I thought we were the first of our line to live in the state of Victoria. My mum had lived briefly in Sydney as a young girl before returning to England. However no one had ventured south of the New South Wales border. It turned out however that we were unwittingly tracing the steps of an ancestor.

Mary Scriven was my 4 x great grandmother. She spent most of her later adult life around Walsall in Staffordshire, after living quite a nomadic early married life with her husband William Sartain. However she suddenly turned up in a census under a different surname. I would have had difficulty finding her if she wasn’t living with a daughter. She had remarried and been widowed again in the years since the previous census. However, I could not find evidence of this second marriage.

I ended up putting this puzzle aside to brew, and instead traced where her various children went, in the time honoured FAN Club way. It turned out two sons had gone to Australia. Not just anywhere in Australia. One, Joseph, went to a tiny place in my state of Victoria that I happened to have visited a lot! Jamieson is literally just a tiny dot on the map, a former gold mining town of about 300 people. The other, Thomas, went to Melbourne (where I currently live), but then moved to Hamilton, a town in Western Victoria where I lived as a child. He is buried there in the cemetery just a few minutes walk from my old home.

Thomas Sartain and son William
Thomas Sartain and son William. Thomas was buried only a few hundred metres from my home in country Victoria. Credit: Steve Haynes

Intrigued, I started to investigate further…and discovered their mother, my missing Mary, had spent some time in Australia with her sons. Her second marriage took place in Melbourne. Thanks to the detailed nature of Victorian marriage certificates, this confirmed her mother’s elusive maiden name for me, and allowed me to progress the tree backwards. Genealogical serendipity. Mary’s second husband died soon after they wed and he is one of the first interments in Brighton Cemetery.

Sartain Rose marriage certificate serendipity
Mary Scriven’s second marriage.
Sartain Rose marriage certificate serendipity
Mary Scriven’s parents revealed.

Have you had any serendipitous moments with your family history research? Comment below, I’d love to hear your stories!

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Genealogy Conference #1 – MyHeritage Live

genealogy myheritage

During this past week, I attended the MyHeritage Live user conference in Amsterdam. Indeed this is the reason I flew all the way over here to the Netherlands from Australia! This was only the second genealogy conference MyHeritage has held. Their inaugural one was in Oslo, Norway last year. Sadly due to health issues at the time I was unable to attend. However this year I was determined to be there. I’d seen several of the presentations from Oslo which were available online and had been very impressed by the professionalism and content.

As you are probably aware, MyHeritage is one of the ‘big three’ genealogy megasites, along with Ancestry and FindMyPast, and it has been in a rapid growth phase over the past couple of years. They have celebrated multiple acquisitions and the commencement of their DNA service. They are the first of the three however to branch into live events for their users such as a genealogy conference. I think this is a brilliant innovation – how many big companies really want this level of input from their core customers? The CEO, Gilad Japhet was present and approachable throughout the entire conference.

The Program

You may think that the conference would be solely unashamed plugging of their product. This was not the case, however. There were three streams: Genealogy, DNA, and Hands-On Workshops, to choose from. Sure, there was quite a bit of content on how to use the tools and features available through the MyHeritage subscription to get the best value from it. Not to include information on this would have been somewhat remiss though, so I was very grateful for it.

For those who would like to see the program contents free of charge, MyHeritage live-streamed during the conference. These presentations are available now here for anyone to watch.

Personal Highlights

First and foremost, as with any conference, it was fabulous to catch up with fellow genealogists from all around the world. There were 450 attendees from 30 countries. Many of them I was familiar with from their blogs, books or professional reputations. Some I had previously struck up virtual friendships with from afar. This weekend was a great opportunity to meet people and forge friendships and networks with them.

Cyndi Ingle of ‘Cyndi’s List’ gave a great presentation on Searching vs Browsing.

Next it was brilliant to hear the announcements of what MyHeritage are now or soon releasing, and there was some exciting stuff!

  • The MyHeritage Education Center was launched – all free, multilingual, how to’s, everything you need to know about tools and techniques, downloadable resources etc.
  • The acquisition of Promethease and SNPedia was announced, as they continue to expand their DNA presence. Promethease has been made free until the end of the year (usually $12 to access the health information). Existing Promethease uploads will be added to the MyHeritage DNA database. The donors will receive free matching and ethnicity results from November 1st (European users will need to opt in for this due to GDPR regulations). This will increase the database size by around 10%.
  • Theories of Family Relativity is apparently close to being automated rather than having periodic updates.
  • Ethnicity estimates will be updated soon and will be incredibly detailed, which is great to hear. I for one have found their ethnicity estimates the least accurate for my known tree of all the current providers. Having now seen a sneak preview of the work they are doing, I am confident we’ll be seeing some really good estimates coming out.
  • A huge pipeline of genealogy content with a strong focus on Europe, including more exclusive French records.
  • Free text matching technology will help match family trees to newspaper and book records more easily.
Every-Jan Blom of Genetic Affairs did a hands-on workshop on his Autocluster tool which is taking the genetic genealogy world by storm.

In conclusion, this conference was well worth attending. In 2020 it will be held in Israel, though dates and other details have not been announced yet. I heartily recommend attending, especially if you have an active subscription with MyHeritage or have had your DNA tested with them.

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Cornelis Drebbel – Inventor, Renaissance Man, Ancestor

Cornelis Drebbel was my 10 x great grandfather and is one of my most intriguing ancestors. Drebbel was once an inventor as famous as Da Vinci or Edison, but he has now faded into obscurity despite his many achievements. Any readers who have visited the Living Seas at Epcot in Disneyworld, however, will have been greeted by a display of Drebbel’s likeness (below).

Drebbel Epcot
Drebbel at Epcot

Whilst here in the Netherlands, I am taking the opportunity to visit Cornelis’ hometown of Alkmaar. Therefore I decided to dedicate this week’s blog to sharing a little bit of his story with you.

A Short Biography of Cornelis Drebbel

cornelis drebbel
Portrait of Cornelius van Drebbel with his signature beneath. Credit: Wellcome Library, London.

Cornelis Drebbel was born in Alkmaar (about 30 minutes north of Amsterdam on today’s trains) in 1572. His father was a local burgher and a landowner, so Cornelis received some education before being apprenticed to Hendrik Goltzius of Haarlem. Goltzius was a well-known painter and engraver, as well as an alchemist. He taught Cornelis much of what he knew about all of those arts. Although Drebbel’s early career was mainly in engraving, he obtained his first patent in 1598. This was for the invention of a water supply system, and for a self-winding clock. In 1602, he also obtained a patent for a new design of chimney.

Around 1604, Cornelis and his young family moved to England where he was installed by the newly-crowned King James I into Eltham Palace. His role was to provide entertainment at court with his many and varied inventions. His most famous invention at that time was the Perpetuum Mobile, or perpetual motion machine.

cornelis drebbel perpetual motion
The perpetual motion machine of Cornelis Drebbel.

Drebbel’s inventions

He also achieved notoriety through several other inventions and displays of genius, such as:

  • automatic and hydraulic organs
  • light projections from magic lanterns and camera obscura
  • fireworks displays
  • the clavichord, a solar-powered musical instrument
  • optical instruments such as compound microscopes
  • pumps for mining and fountains
  • thermostats, leading to his ‘circulating oven’ for incubating eggs
  • a demonstration of air-conditioning for the King in the Great Hall of Westminster Abbey.
  • a dyeing method which allowed for scarlet to be set with cochineal allowing red cloth to be mass-produced for the first time
  • sulphuric acid manufacture
  • weaponry such as water mines, water petards and fireships
  • drainage schemes to reclaim marshlands
  • and most famously…the submarine!

The Submarine

In 1620, Cornelis Drebbel invented the submarine. It was “covered in greased leather, with a watertight hatch in the middle, a rudder and four oars. Under the rowers’ seats were large pigskin bladders, connected by pipes to the outside. Rope was used to tie off the empty bladders. In order to dive the rope was untied and the bladders filled. To surface the crew squashed the bladders flat, squeezing out the water”.

cornelis drebbel submarine
Drebbel’s submarine travelling beneath the river Thames.

The illustration of his grand demonstration for the King in 1626 (above) shows the third of his submarines, which had six oars and could carry sixteen rowers. The demonstration had the submarine do a 3-hour return trip from Westminster to Greenwich and back. This scene was captured in comedic form in the movie “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen”. This movie is sadly as far as I know the only Hollywood depiction of Cornelis Drebbel ever attempted!

Drebbel’s later life

Although Cornelis had a genius for invention and was clearly a great showman, his ability to make a profit was less well-developed. This wasn’t helped by the champagne tastes of his wife Sophia (sister of his early mentor Hendrik Goltzius), who spent far more than he made. He rarely patented his inventions. Indeed he wrapped them in a layer of secrecy to protect his exclusivity. In his final years the money ran out and he was reduced to operating an alehouse in London. He died in London in 1633. In his will, he left his paltry estate to be divided between four of his children. I am descended from his daughter Catherine, who married Johannes Siebert Kuffeler.

Cornelis Drebbel – Alkmaar’s Greatest Son

In 2013, Cornelis Drebbel was declared Alkmaar’s greatest son after a vote was held. I was contacted as a known descendant and interviewed by the local paper, which felt like a great honour. In 2019, I am walking in his footsteps through the streets of Alkmaar.

Cornelis Drebbel Alkmaar Courant
The Alkmaar Courant 26 January 2013. Cornelis Drebbel is pronounced Alkmaar’s greatest export, and his 10 x great-granddaughter gets her first newspaper front page!