Anna Wilson is a Free UK Genealogy volunteer and PHAROS student.

Here, she shares with us an example of how FreeREG helped her track down the baptism record of her four-times great grandfather, William Dunbar.

I have been researching my family history since 2004 after discovering three Victorian photograph albums in a dark corner of my parent's attic. It's a large attic and was full of ‘stuff’ so these albums had been left untouched for years. My father stated that he had never seen them before even though the house had been his family home since the 1960s. 

The photograph albums led to the discovery that my paternal great-grandparents were Scottish and offered me the opportunity to delve into the amazing records available at ScotlandsPeople.

This was until I came across the name of my four times great grandfather William Dunbar. I easily found trees online which included William and a baptism record for him on the 14th April 1754 in Whittinghame, East Lothian. The actual baptism record detailed the name of his father Alexander Dunbar and his mother Helen Pringle, and I happily continued to work on my tree entering in the details of his marriage and children. 

I tend to bulk the wish list of records I want to purchase with credit at ScotlandsPeople as it keeps me on a focused path rather than straying into looking at ‘potential’ records and using up all my credit. So it was months later that I obtained a copy of Peter Taylor’s will, my three times great grandfather, who had been married to Ratchel Dunbar, William’s daughter.

Peter Taylor, family photograph

Peter Taylor’s will was a gem of a genealogical document for both the Taylor and Dunbar families. It referred to land that Ratchel had inherited from her father, which had belonged to William Dunbar’s mother… Ratchel Galloway. This was an unfamiliar name: where was Helen Pringle? I revisited the records I had about William. His marriage to Catherine Patterson was in 1785 in Haddington, East Lothian. Their marriage occurred before the introduction of Civil Registration in Scotland in 1855 and so I was reliant on the Old Parish Registers of marriage. The entry stated that they had been irregularly married in Edinburgh – perhaps more information would be in the Kirk Session Records but residing in Somerset a visit to the National Records of Scotland (NRS) would not be happening any time soon.

So, I searched ScotlandsPeople again changing dates, names, and locations with the same three results but none relating to William Dunbar the son of Alexander Dunbar and Ratchel Galloway. 

By 2018 I had been trying to search for William Dunbar’s correct baptism for 2 years. I discovered that FreeREG had great coverage of baptisms, marriages and burials for the East Lothian area. I decided to use their search engine, making sure I used the Soundex facility. In less than a minute, bingo: there he was William Dumbar, baptised in the September of 1759 in Haddington, East Lothian just below the other William Dunbar baptised 1754 in Whittinghame, East Lothian. Clicking on the entry his father was Alexander Dunbar and his mother was transcribed as Rahall Gallaway, with William Gallaway as a witness.

Baptism record of William Dumbar on FreeREG

So why could I not find the original image on ScotlandsPeople? 

I went back to ScotlandsPeople and searched using ‘Rahall Galloway’ as William’s parent and used phonetic and wildcard searches to match the transcription of the baptism entry and there it was in the search results. It recorded William Dumbar’s parents as Alexander Dumbar and Rachall Galloway and I was able to purchase the correct baptism for my William Dunbar – leading to a different family to that of Alexander Dunbar and Helen Pringle. 

So, some valuable lessons learnt along the way:

• Always verify the information and sources from online trees, 
• Never give up on brick walls,
• Find as many records relating to an ancestor as possible,
• Use as many search facilities as possible to find them,
• Always use phonetic and wildcard searches on different websites
• If FreeREG covers your area of interest in Scotland it is a great resource to identify names that have been mistranscribed as well as assist in narrowing down the relevant individual before you spend your credit at ScotlandsPeople.

I wish I had found FreeREG sooner!

With everything going on in the world at the moment, alongside all the recent changes at Free UK Genealogy, we have had a number of volunteers ask for more information about our financial position. We hope it would be interesting to volunteers to share a bit more about how our finances work and what we have been doing recently to put us on a firmer footing.

Inherently, our financial position is very robust. Our operating model is built around hundreds of volunteers – transcribers, coordinators, developers and trustees. We have a very limited staff of just four people, only two of whom are full time. All our operations were remote, even before COVID, so we have no costs for an office or travel. Our total financial expenses are around £9,000 per month. This compares to the value of donated time which we estimate at around £250,000 per month.

Historically, advertising income has provided £6,500 per month and ad-hoc donations another £700.  Whilst this is able to fund most of our costs, it doesn’t cover everything. In addition we found our advertising income to be increasingly erratic which is a concern given our dependence on this form of funding. As a result we have run a small deficit over the last few years. We had managed to build up significant reserves from a commercial licensing deal which we have been slowly consuming. Our reserves have fallen below the minimum specified in our reserves policy so action was unavoidable to ensure the charity’s finances were sustainable. 

This is why in 2021 the trustees decided to shift our emphasis onto donations and established a Fundraising Steering Committee. We recruited a specific trustee, Kathryn Streatfield, with fundraising experience to help with this effort. We set a fundraising target of £14,000 for 2022 and a longer term target that donations cover 20% of operating expenses. We have increased donor communications, started a specific donations pop-up which has run monthly on FreeCEN and FreeREG (and will start soon on FreeBMD) and plan to participate in this November’s “Big Give” campaign. 

We know that many of our users and supporters are willing and able to support us in this way. However, we also know that others prefer to contribute through their volunteer work. This is just as important to us and is very much appreciated! We have tried our best to ensure our donation appeals are sensitive to this - particularly at a time like now when many people are feeling the stretch. We also want to ensure that our adverts do not detract from the user experience.

Earlier this year we signed a new agreement with MyHeritage, replacing some of our Google AdSense adverts with specially designed ‘widget’ adverts. This provides users with more relevant and targeted adverts, as well as increasing engagement and the revenue we raise. This has been successful in boosting our advertising income, and we have now moved this to a permanent partnership.

Finally, we have had a sustained effort at managing our costs better. Overall this has reduced our run rate from £15,000 per month in 2018 to £9,000 per month today. However, we know we have to balance this cost control against ensuring the projects get all the support they need to keep delivering our charitable objectives, which has certainly been a challenge recently. And with inflation affecting our costs and our staff, we know that we should expect an increase in costs in the near future, however strict we are with controls.

These three areas - donations, adverts and cost control - have successfully turned round our position. We are now running a monthly surplus and expect to be back within our reserves policy by early next year. This more robust financial position means we can focus on ensuring our resources are dedicated to supporting our websites and our volunteers and delivering our objectives – making genealogy records available - in the best way possible.

We are keen to be open and transparent about our finances in future and communicate more about this. Our annual accounts are published, like all charities, on the Charity Commission website. 

I’m happy to respond to any concerns or queries from any of our volunteers and hear any ideas you have - please email me if you want to get in touch.

Free UK Genealogy is going through a period of change at the moment, with the retirement from the projects of a number of long-serving staff and volunteers. They have all been critical to the huge success we have had with these projects and I wanted to add my voice to say a big thank you for their long service.

There is now a greater need for additional technical volunteering. Reflecting on this important priority, Richard Light has decided to move from his current role as Chair of Trustees to a new role, where he will be actively involved in program development (initially on the FreeBMD2 project). He hopes this change will strengthen the links between the software development work and the Trustees, and that it will encourage other volunteer developers to come forward. We believe this will be a great help to this critical need for the organisation and ensure we can continue to be technically robust and develop further into the future.

The board of trustees have asked me, an existing trustee, to assume the role of chair with effect from September 2022. I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself to the projects and explain how I see the role working going forward.

I have been a trustee of Free UK Genealogy since 2018, but a user of the projects for much longer. I've been researching my family history since 1985 and using FreeBMD, FreeCEN and FreeREG regularly since their early days. I'm passionate about free data, being a founder and former trustee of Wikimedia UK, which supports the Wikipedia family of websites in the UK. My day job is working as a risk manager for a mortgage lender which (whilst very different from FreeUKGEN) gives me a good financial background and I'm familiar with the requirements of good governance.

As trustees we recognise that we need to improve our communications, in particular with the key project volunteers, and this blog is one of the ways we will do this, The trustees have been very focussed recently on securing our financial future (which I'll share more on shortly) and managing staff changes. However, we realise that it's ultimately the volunteers — transcribers, coordinators, developers etc. — who deliver our goals as a charity: the record transcriptions that our users value so much. Whilst none of us have a magic wand to solve all problems, we want to be better at understanding what we can do to help the projects deliver and develop.

I know we have sent out quite a few surveys in recent months and a big thank you to everyone who has filled those in. They have given us a much better sense of what we should be focusing on, what is creating value and how we can make a difference. However, they are also (mostly) anonymous which means it's difficult for us to follow up directly on specific comments. If anyone has anything they want to follow up on please feel free to email me any time on Andrew.Turvey@freeukgenealogy.org.uk. I will always be keen to hear feedback on how we are doing and views and ideas on what we can do differently!

An intriguing entry occasionally catches the eye of our transcribers - and raises all kinds of unanswered questions.

One such entry was recently unearthed by Ian Slater, a volunteer transcriber for FreeREG, when working his way through the burial register for Broadway Cemetery in Peterborough.

Ian writes:

When transcribing records, it is unusual to find one with an unconfirmed name; an age ‘range’; and an unknown address. So, when I found the following entry, it literally stopped me in my tracks:

Why was his name “supposed to be”? And why was his age in doubt, and his address unknown?

Today, some 130 years later, we have the benefit of access to digitised records on the internet and, naturally, my first thought was to search for the name online.

My search revealed a sorry and puzzling tale – reported in several newspapers* nationwide during August and September of 1885.

Found Shot

The reports revealed that Count Hipólito Finat was a Spanish nobleman, born in Madrid in 1838, and married to Leonor de Carvajal in 1870. He was a member of the Spanish Cortes, Deputy for the Province of Seville - and, sadly, he had shot himself in the head in King Street, Peterborough on the morning of Wednesday 12th August 1885.

The first problem was identification – and, as the record shows, at the point of burial (five days after his death) they were not even sure they had got his name correct!

The newspapers reported that Finat was found with nothing in his pockets that would lead to his identification. But from the quality of his clothes (made by outfitters in Paris) and, from his appearance, it was thought that this was “a gentleman from Spain or France”.

So, the City Mayor contacted the Spanish and French Consuls in London. And, having found that the waistband of Finat’s trousers had the maker’s name of Robert Cumberland with an address in Paris (together with the name Finat and Madrid), the Mayor also contacted M Cumberland. In the telegram reply, it was confirmed that Hipolito Finat was a well-known gentleman from Madrid.

The newspapers reported that he had, in fact, left Paris on 10th August, with 600 French Francs (about £24) and a gold watch and chain in his possession, although this was missing when his body was found.

For some time, it seems Finat had been under the care of a Dr Barbet, Rue Boileau, Paris, and in a telegram received by the Mayor of Peterborough from Finat's bankers in Paris, it is stated that he was "temporarily mad". It was also reported that Finat had expressed an intention to commit suicide as he had thought that he would lose his fortune.

At the inquest on 24th August 1885, an open verdict of Found Shot was returned.

Image from the National Library of Wales

Exhumation

With the identity confirmed and some context gathered, attention now focused on repatriation.
On 19th August, the Consul-General of Spain based in London contacted the Mayor by telegram asking that the body be preserved. However, of course, the burial had taken place in the Broadway Cemetery two days earlier by the city Poor-Law Officials (after a photograph had been taken).

Subsequently, on 10th September 1885, the Peterborough Mayor received an order from the Home Secretary for the exhumation of the body of Count Finat. This took place on 14th September at 4am in the presence of a group that included the Mayor, a Catholic priest, a doctor and the head-constable. 

Four days later, the body was sent to London (after being encased in a lead shell and an oak coffin with silver mountings), where it was shipped on board the SS Lope de Vega, and forwarded to Madrid, accompanied by the priest.

Why Peterborough?

The question remains: Why did an important Spanish Count depart Paris and travel to Peterborough in England to commit suicide?
While searching on the Count’s name in the newspaper archives, Finat’s name was found listed as a director on a 'prospectus' for the Union Bank of Spain and England Limited in 1881. This gives him a reason for having been in England – but the bank was headquartered in London, so why Peterborough? Maybe a branch was being considered there. Further searches show the bank went into voluntary liquidation around 1895, so it’s possible that Finat had good cause to fear he might lose his fortune.

A noble link

Peterborough does have one other link with Spanish nobility: some 350 years earlier, Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII, was buried in Peterborough Cathedral (1536). So, Finat was not the first important Spaniard to be buried locally – although he was probably the only one to have been exhumed and taken back to the country of his birth!
 
At Free UK Genealogy, we naturally champion using free resources for our research. Although most newspaper archives are behind 'paid' walls these days, it is possible to search some newspaper archives for free and extract information. A search on ‘Count Finat’ in the newspaper archives (see sources below) brings up several pages of headlines and extracts, from which it has been possible to ascertain several facts about the incident, as Ian has related in this article. The Welsh Newspapers online site is, however, completely free!

Sources

Results for 'count finat' | Between 1st Jan 1850 and 31st Dec 1899 | British Newspaper Archive

Welsh Newspapers Online - Search - '()' (library.wales)

Hipólito Finat | findmypast.co.uk