The Hampshire Family Historian | Vol.49 No.1 | June 2022

Local Group Programmes

the censuses taken in 1921 and 1951. Its main task was to produce a register to issue identity cards to the civilian population and so omitted active members of the armed forces, unless they were at home on leave. The Register was subsequently used for issuing ration books, and then used by the NHS for several years after the war had ended. The register has several handwritten coded annotations and these are probably from the time when it was an NHS working document. The codes are not explained. There are in fact 3 registers but only one is accessible. The others are for the Armed Forces and for those born after 29 September 1939. The register is available in full on FindMyPast and Ancestry, with indexes and transcriptions only on My Heritage and The Genealogist, for England and Wales only. Anyone who is now less than 100 years old has had their entry redacted and they are not included in the indexes. The redacted entries can be opened if the person has died and a copy of the death certificate is sent to FindMyPast. As it was used as a working document, women’s married names were often added as late as 1990. However, this practice was not followed in all cases. As a result, the indexes sometimes show the married name instead of the maiden name. Peter showed an instance where the married name had wrongly been assigned to other family members. The recommendation was, as for all documents, to examine the original image. Each area had a four-letter code (e.g. Eastleigh area codes began EDG, with Fair Oak being EDGD), and this code formed the first part of people's numbers on their ID cards, along with the schedule and sub-schedule numbers from the register. The register contains some useful information. Occupations are described in more detail with a view to assign people to war work. There are maps and population details by area along with most common surnames and professions. If you can't find someone, possible reasons could include: they were born less than 100 years ago and the register hasn't been updated if they have died in recent years, they were not in England or Wales on the night in question, they were living apart from the rest of their family, the street name may have changed. (February) Demistifying DNA – Neil LIttleales February’s meeting was held on Zoom and we were joined by two overseas visitors, both from Canada. Neil’s talk, fortunately for most of us, wasn’t a deeply medical or scientific text book and provided sufficient information for family history research. Neil and our two Canadian visitors all recommended 'The Family Tree Guide to DNA Testing and Genetic Genealogy' by Blaine Bettinger as a well laid out and easy to understand reference work. There are three types of test in order of reliability: Y chromosome (male line), mitochondrial (female line) and autosomal (everyone). Autosomal tests are now the most common and provided by a number of companies. Ancestry have the largest database. Margaret from

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