’Ancestors’ magazine will be discontinued and the last publication will be the April issue (no 94), available from Thursday 25 March.
via Changes to magazine publishing at The National Archives | The National Archives.
From Tuesday 6 April 2010 the eight separate fees currently charged by the General Register Office GRO for ordering a certificate will be reduced to two – one for standard orders and one for the priority service.
read more at IPS – General Register Office introduces new charges.
“Genealogy is, depending on who you consult, either the fastest growing hobby in the U.S., the most popular pastime in the U.S., or just so hot right now.”
read more at Why are Americans Mad about Genealogy?: The Book Bench : The New Yorker.
It is surprising how many people do not realise how popular genealogy is even though there have been 7 TV series of ’Who do you think you are?’ with an accompanying website in the UK. Both the UK and the USA have series currently planned or in production. More US production information is availble here.
Mixed race, mulattos, coloureds, multiracial and a multiple number of more derogatory terms have been used to describe those of us who are of mixed origin. In Southern Africa, where I hail from, the term used is Coloured and the biggest and oldest of the community is the Cape Coloured. During the pre-production of ‘I’m Not Black, I’m Coloured – Identity Crisis at the Cape’, an historical documentary film to explore the legacy of Apartheid through the viewpoint of the Cape Coloured community, a DNA project was started since “we can not always use surnames to track our lineage (such as Adams, Jacobs) as surnames were given during slavery by the colonizers upon arrival to Cape Town in the late 1600’s.” This should be a wonderful experiment in using DNA for genealogical and historical purposes and I shall be watching the project carefully over the next few years. The details of the DNA project can be found at http://www.capecoloureddnaproject.com/
References:
http://capecoloured.ning.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulatto
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coloured_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Coloureds
http://www.mixedfolks.com/africa.htm
Ancestry.com, the world’s largest online family history resource, proudly announces it has teamed up with NBC as sponsor of the upcoming “Who Do You Think You Are?” television series in the USA. Ancestry.com provided important research for the show, including tracing the roots of the seven celebrities featured.
read more @ Ancestry.com – Press Releases.
The Alien Arrivals Collection documents the arrival of more than 610,000 immigrants into the UK between the late 18th and early 20th centuries. The collection includes some of the earliest surviving records of immigrants recorded under the Aliens Act 1793. The records go online for the first time at Ancestry.co.uk
see full story @ Trace your immigrant ancestry online | The National Archives.
Not content with being the centre of internet genealogy research, being the home of the useful Family Search website – http://www.familysearch.org/, Utah looks set to help genealogists and other lay people understand a bit more about genetics. Two Web sites created at the University of Utah were awarded the Science Prize for Online Resources in Education for “providing an excellent source of new material while educating a hugely diverse audience of users.” http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/ uses interactive animations to explain genetics to the un-initiated.
Next year there will be 12,000 people aged 100 or over in the UK. In 10 years time this will have nearly doubled to 22,000. Read Full Story here
DyNAstyBlog wishes everyone a wonderful Christmas and a happy new year.
I finally got round to reading Professor Bryan Sykes’ book “The Seven Daughters of Eve”. Professor Sykes is a leading world authority on DNA and human evolution. If you have an interest in DNA and how genetics affects family history you must read this book. In my opinion, it has, by far, the best layman’s description of what mitochondria is, the tiny structures within each cell, which are passed on purely down the maternal line. He briefly touches on the Y-chromosome only in so far as it backs up the maternal evidence. Amazon readers have given the book four stars. My personal verdict would be four stars.
Be warned, the book does touch on his famous ‘Ice-man’ case and his work with the Polynesians but it is really geared to the European daughters of Eve. Readers in the US, may still be interested especially if you are of European descent.
The census will ask 14 household questions and up to 35 questions for each individual, which helps to decide how billions of pounds worth of future public services are planned.
Thousands of marriages between 1795 to 1895 carried out in Gretna Green (Scotland) are set to be published online by Ancestry.co.uk. This will help some genealogists in finding records of marriages that may have seemed lost forever. Gretna Green became the eloping capital of British Isles after Marriage Act of 1754 and was not immune to some controversy.