Newport, Monmouthshire, UK

Newport, Monmouthshire, UK Roll of Honour

"Dedicated to the war dead of Newport City, Gwent formerly Newport, Monmouthshire lost in all confrontations.

The names on this website have come from two Rolls of Honour books held at the Reference Library in Newport, Gwent. There is one for each world war and I recognise that there are mistakes in both of them which will be repeated here as well as some names will be omitted unintentionally but can be rectified if I am informed.

The details supplied by both books has been supplemented by further information obtained from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website as well as the addition of photographs of the individuals if they can be obtained or of their graves."

Religion and Genealogy

Religion and Genealogy « What’s Past is Prologue: "As a genealogist, I am saddened to think that one day records may not be available - for without them, I would know very little about my ancestors. That is to say, without the Mormons taking those records, microfilming them, and making them available for me to look at.

As a Catholic, I can sort of understand why the Church, or why other faith groups, find offense in the Mormon tenent that they can baptize any deceased person into their faith. When I first heard of this, I was somewhat taken aback. What? They can make my great-grandfather Mormon? He’d “roll over” as the expression goes. I think my great-grandmother was Protestant, but I haven’t prayed to “make” her accept my faith today! It was her life to live, and I respect her choices and her life.

I say I “sort of” understand because I find it more humorous than offensive."

Family Tree Maker 2008 updated

Family Tree Maker 2008 by Ancestry.com: "Program Updates are Now Available
Service Pack 3 contains critical stability and performance enhancements. We strongly urge you to install this service pack at your earliest convenience."

The following updates are included in Service Pack 3:

Enhancements and New features:

• Major enhancements to performance, improvements including:
• Startup time
• File load time
• Report/Chart creation time
• General navigation
• Memory usage
• Major enhancements to stability throughout the program
• Book layout in charts for:
• Descendant Chart
• Hourglass Chart
• Vertical Pedigree Chart
• Ability to create saved versions for all charts and reports
• Ability to apply predefined templates for charts
• Ability to save user created templates for charts
• Enhancements to place interactions, including:
• New Change Place Name dialog allowing for easier changing of place name and description information
• Double-clicking and right clicking additions to the Places workspace
• New Find-and-Replace dialog with additional ability to search with wildcards and to specify where to search in and enhanced information showing where the item was found.
• Major enhancements to the Analyze/Compact file functionality
• Outline Descendant report has Items to Include options
• Inclusion of Married Name AKA and Titles in index
• Automatic simple backup at shutdown
• Ability to turn off place authority searching when entering place names
• Enhancements to the RTF export
• Ability to add boxes in charts to a “Marked Box” category and modify box settings for these boxes
• Preparer Information in the footer for charts
• Options to include spouses and children in filtering and exporting of people

Major enhancements to Sources including

People Workspace

• Copy and paste source-citations. After copying (from source-citation dialog or sources toolbar), you can paste a duplicate source-citation or a link to the existing one via the “New” source menu.
• Ability to copy source-citation at creation for pasting

Sources Workspace

• Double-clicking on a source title in the “Sources” workspace displays the “Edit Source Title” dialog for easier editing of sources in this view.
• Double-clicking on a repository in the “Sources” workspace displays the “Edit Repository” dialog for easier editing of repositories in this view.
• Right-mouse menus have been added to the left panel.

Repository Dialog

• The “Repository” dialog is resizable.

Source Title Dialog

• The “Source Title” dialog includes a usage button that displays usage for that source (This is redundant in the “Source” workspace, but useful elsewhere).
• The “Source Title” dialog is resizable.

Source-Citation Dialog

• The “Source-Citation” dialog is resizable
• The “Source-Citation” dialog includes a reference to the number of linked facts.
• Addition of a copy button (see copy and paste source-citations above).

Find Source-Citation Dialog

• The option to “Link To Existing Source-Citation” is changed to “Use Existing Source-Citation.” Then there are two buttons in the resulting “Find Source-Citation” dialog. After finding and selecting a source-citation the user can choose “Link To Citation” or “Copy New Citation”. The link option does the same as “OK” did before and the new copy option adds another easy way to create a duplicate source-citation.
• Performance when listing by people is greatly improved.
• The “View by” setting is remembered so that if you view by source title for example, it comes up that way the next time.
• Left and right panels are sized proportionally when the dialog is resized.

List of some of the higher priority bugs that have been fixed

Charts

• Made default settings more like FTM 16 default settings.
• Changes made in Box, Border, and Line Options don’t force a chart reload unless necessary.
• Export to image decreases the resolution (DPI) of the image if the image is very large.
• Charting uses less memory.
• Charting draws faster.
• Saved chart dates and times work for international dates.

• The User Interface recognizes metric regions and sizes are shown in centimeters or millimeters for Metric regions.
• Improved drawing and scaling of the “Advanced” layout for Standard Pedigree charts in Poster layout.
• Background colors stay in synchronization which background images changes and vice-versa.
• Facts that are description centric, such as AKA, now default to options that are meaningful.
• Miscellaneous UI changes such as hiding the “Advanced” button when in book layout or not in Standard Pedigree charts.
• Improved loading time for Box, Border, and Line Options dialog, Fonts Dialog, and Page Setup.
• Improved pedigree line drawing for special conditions such as parent box smaller than child box in a Standard Pedigree.
• Improved the restoring of box sizes on reload or opening a saved chart.

• File dialog restores to last directory used.
• Quick Print Dialog did not have the correct values in the header control.
• Selected boxes in charts have “more emphasis” to show that they are selected.
• Improved displaying of all Shared Facts.
• Improved drawing speed and memory usage for pedigree lines in the pedigree chart.
• Improved drawing of pedigree lines in the pedigree chart by calculating the overlap and thus finding a new “center” point.
• The “fact” or divider line can now be a different color and width than the pedigree line. This makes it possible to do some nice contrast inside of the person box.

• If a fact is changed it is picked up in the chart. The chart doesn’t reload and often the fact change is such that this doesn’t matter. If the chart does need to be regenerated there is now a generate button too.
• Saving of POSTER size images of all types of charts. (Export Image)
• Gradient box fill ability. Note that some printers can’t handle gradient and transparent at the same time.
• Throttle the chart size after 14 generations for Pedigree charts in poster layout. All other charts have a 99 generation limit now. Charts over 13 generations will set the spacing to collapsed.

Reports

• RTF output is not easily editable
• Photo album excludes non-image media items.
• Title includes primary person automatically for some reports
• Ahnentafel Report - blank lines between end notes
• Ahnentafel Report - disappears when checking Use short biographies
• Ahnentafel report - name and sex fact notes don’t display

• Export to RTF, data fields are underlined
• Individual Report - Name options don’t apply to all names
• Outline Descendant Report - export to RTF includes weird characters
• Outline Descendant Report - Items to include, include blank facts not working
• Outline Descendant Report - name of focus person not in title
• Place Usage Report - missing fact labels
• Register Report - Also Known As not displaying correctly
• Register Report - names in all caps
• Register Report - not seeing Name fact note
• Register Report and Ahnentafel Report - information repeating
• Report Titles not updating

• Spouse sorting in individual report is fixed
• Civil and Canon values in Kinship report is fixed
• Individual report sorting spouses incorrectly
• Notes do not appear correctly in reports
• Bold, Italic, & Underline in notes don’t appear in Individual Report
• Photo album report – images per row setting not working
• Documented Facts Report – non-preferred facts not appearing, their sources are

• Photo Album Report - blanks out with non-image media items
• Photo Album Report - sorting images (images are now sorted by caption and filename)
• Kinship Report - sorting individuals
• Register Report - crash saving report
• Research Note Report - not displaying bold, underline & italic in notes
• Relationship Report not working in People module
• Photo Album not working in People module
• Individual report displays preferred name for all name facts.
• Fixed numbering problem in Outline Descendant report

Find and Replace

• Clicking stop before results are found messes up what gets found and results in a crash
• Can’t find words with punctuation at the end
• Certain characters (<>) caused the found text to not be displayed
• Crash navigating to people collection after “Go To” from find and replace
• Change all place names dialog pops up even if there is only 1 fact associated with a place
• Can click find and replace when there is no tree loaded

Copy/Paste Sources

• Pasting Link/Copy to a source causes problems with the reference note
• Pasting a duplicate source doesn’t copy the source note
• Paste option not active on facts that have no data
• Ability to copy source from Manage Source view added

File Merge

• Marriage fact of preferred spouse was shown for all spouses in the host file
• Improved people matching
• File merge creates multiple relationships for the same person
• FTM crashes when merging creates a recursive relationship (i.e. child is his own father)
• Improved matching accuracy and performance when files are derivatives of each other

Web Merge

• Crash when changing a place name in web search and then merging
• Clicking on “Create Page Archive” before Web Search is completely loaded crashes FTM
• Source not added to sex fact if default merge settings were changed
• Added drop-down to select a different source title when editing source
• Web Merge Wizard dialog doesn’t display the correct instructions when merging images and notes (but no facts/people)
• Crash when editing a screen scraped place name and then trying to merge
• Multiple copies of the same media being saved to the media folder when merging the same Ancestry.com record multiple times

General

• People filter updated to be more correct
• Crash after compact then backing up fixed
• Gedcom export was doing certain fact types (description only, etc.)
• Export of living people no longer uses Living as their name. It keeps the name but hides all other facts.
• “Approximately” or “Approx.” should be recognized as “Abt. for dates

• Britain resolve place name selection of United Kingdom clears field
• If the history is empty it shows the same names as index
• Program crashes when you delete a person from the History panel
• Edit source dialog/Reference note doesn’t display citation text when is should
• Children sorting in family panel fixed
• Change place name issues resolved (crashes when adding just description and other problems)
• Modified reference notes correctly imported
• Scrolling problem in source list in person view

• “Approximately” or “Approx.” now recognized as “Abt. for dates
• Relationship information now showing up in English installs in non-English speaking countries
• Crash when merging two people together, sometimes
• Crash when changing person’s name due to Operating System audio driver crash
• Crash when adding sources – it may crash one more time, then on restart fix the problem
• Crash when adding media types .gif and .ICO
• Fixes to resolving place names without a city name
• Non-preferred facts show up in reports
• Problems importing sources from FTM 2005 files

• Marriage data not showing in hourglass chart
• Ahnentafel numbers are not correct
• Export not working when “Include private Facts” deselected.
• Exporting a subset of people still includes all places, sources, etc.
• Resolve All Dialog doesn’t append to description it replaces the existing descry
• Register Report shows same info for multiple spouses
• Alternate names do not appear in the Family Group Sheet
• Error importing v2005 file
• Pressing the ESC key clears the data in a date or description field
• AKA appears out of order in charts and reports

• Media Item Report Export to .PDF not working correctly
• Printing a Pedigree Chart from People isn’t working
• Moving a place to a description then moves the description to the place
• Pedigree, Descendant, Hourglass, & Vertical Pedigree Charts - settings not saved
• Import of media caption and description is lost via PAF import
• Source not always being added from Web Merge
• Unknown dates not exporting to Gedcom
• Can’t delete project after running media report - media item held open
• UNK should be recognized when entered as a date as Unknown
• Importing GEDCOM file with normal tags
• Duplicate people showing up in relationship view

UpFront

NGS | UpFront with NGS: The Online Newsletter of the National Genealogical Society: "UpFront with NGS is a free, monthly genealogy newsletter by e-mail, designed for members of the National Genealogical Society and the entire genealogical community. The online newsletter will bring you the latest genealogy news, information about upcoming events and brief articles to help you with your genealogical research."

New Web Site Connects Alumni of Chicago Schools

The Chicago Public Schools recently launched a new webssite to connect an estimated three million people who have attended or worked in Chicago Public Schools, with separate home pages for every school in CPS history. CPS is the first large urban public school district to organize its alumni in this way. Users can search for school records on relatives between 1873 and 1973.

The goal of CPSalumni.org is to build relationships with alumni and their former schools and classmates, engage alumni in supporting their schools, share information about alumni groups and activities, encourage the sharing of stories and photos about school experiences, and archive public education in Chicago.

The site also will enable CPS to continue to build its list of famous CPS alumni, which includes people such as Amelia Earhart, Nat King Cole, and Harrison Ford. Users are asked to complete a free registration form, even if they are not CPS alumni. To see an example of a lively, engaging, and interactive website with a theme, have a look at www.CPSalumni.org.

-- 28th International Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Chicago

Chicago and Midwest Jewish Genealogy Research is one of many themes at the 28th International Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Chicago, Illinois on August 17-22, 2008. Co-hosts are the International Association of Jewish Genealogy (IAJGS) and the Illiana Jewish Genealogical Society.

For more information about the program, registration, and other aspects of the conference, see: www.Chicago2008.org

ªThe National Genealogical Society, Arlington, Virginia, USA - Your Guide to Genealogy and Family History

fakes at TNA

from an email:-

Saturday's broadcast of "Today" included a report that 27 forged documents have been found in the National Archives, all relating to WW2 stories that have formed the basis of 3 expose-type books.

A journalist from the Financial Times said that he found it suspicious that he could see pencil under a signature on a letter!
The police have investigated, sent in a file with their evidence, but the Public Prosecution mob are not taking it further because of the state of health of the main suspect...

The story's here http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/ - scroll down about half a screen.
Apart from the obvious worry about forgeries, there's the fact that now there's 3 more books floating about which will be regarded as evidence by future researchers because the references, etc, all look good (sources in the NA? Must be right!), despite the fact that the forgeries have now been removed.

About us | FOI disclosure log 2007: "Forged documents - investigation findings

In July 2005, it was discovered that a number of files held at The National Archives contained forged documents. These files related to the Second World War. This resulted in a thorough internal investigation, the findings of which are available"

Ancestors Like Gorillas

How Our Ancestors Were Like Gorillas: "'It's common knowledge that boys mature later than girls, but in humans the difference is actually much less marked than in some other primates. Male gorillas continue to grow long after their wisdom teeth have come through, and they don't reach what is referred to as dominant 'silverback' status until many years after the females have already started to have offspring. Our research makes us think that, in this fossil species, one older male was probably dominant in a troop of females. This situation was risky for the males and they suffered high rates of predation as a result of both their social structure"

University College London (2007, November 30). How Our Ancestors Were Like Gorillas.

Ancestors

A Tribute to our Ancestors
© Roy Stockdill 1997

from "Rhyming Relations: Genealogy in Verse"

THEY did not choose us, nor we them; we never knew them, nor they us; yet we
are inextricably bound together for all eternity and there is no law in the
universe, no metamorphosis physical or spiritual, that can ever alter this
inalienable truth.

OFTEN we may wish for different ones and feel moved to deny the ones we
have, but this is as futile as it is foolish to invent spurious ones, for
our deception will surely be unmasked, if not by others, ultimately by our
own conscience.

WE owe everything, our very existence, to our ancestors, and yet we know
next to nothing of them because mostly their lives were so humbly recorded.
It is good that we seek to expand our knowledge of their lives so that we
may better understand our own.

THEY made us, body and soul, and we must accept without complaint or rancour
what they were and what we are, for nothing and no-one can ever change this
fact and it is barren folly to dwell obsessively upon it.

WE recognise that the legacy of genetic inheritance is a double-edged sword.
We should be grateful for those gifts of personality and disposition our
ancestors bestowed upon us which we find beneficial and not rail against
those traits we find less appealing, for it is surely in our own hands to
change them.

WE should take pride in our ancestors and their achievements wherever
possible, whether high-born or low, rich or poor, prince or pauper, and not
seek arbitrarily to revile or condemn them for acts of which we know nothing
of the causes.

WE must learn from them, from their mistakes as well as their successes;
from their tragedies as well as their triumphs; from their sins as well as
their virtues; from their hopes as well as their fears.

POSTERITY and history are irrevocably intertwined in the present. No
coherent vision of the future can exist without an affinity for the past and
cognizance of the lives of our forebears.

REMEMBER that we, too, are the ancestors of those yet unborn and we should
seek to leave for them a heritage of which they can be as proud as we are of
that which our forebears bequeathed to us.

WE bless and thank our ancestors for the legacy of the good things they gave
us, forgive them their errors and pray that we will endeavour to use wisely
the knowledge which they handed down to us.

a better version than A Tribute to our Ancestors: which needs correcting
and my thanks to Kathleen of soc.genealogy.britain for this one see post:-
 A Tribute to our Ancestors