Saturday 7 June 2014

Genealogy Notes 30 May - 7 Jun 2014 Probate records and other things

Winter snuck up on me and the last week simply passed me by. It is not really winter here as I still have my daily swim when home although it is getting a tad cooler in the pool. To try and get into a wintry mood I even made my favourite curried ham and pumpkin soup but we all agreed it was a bit warm to be having soup.

Not like Canberra  where we lived for a few years and I will be heading to next week for a few days. There is a National Archives of Australia WW1 advisory committee meeting and I will be taking the opportunity to have a look at where we will be launching National Family History Month this year. Not long now till August so I hope societies, libraries and archives are putting all their August events into the NFHM web calendar. A great way to attract newbies and even old timers to your events. I also have some catch up with friends dinners and coffees and tossing up whether to go to the National Library of Australia or the Australian War Memorial.

But that is next week - so what made me forget to write up my Diary this week. Well I did finally get my orchid house and we spent a bit of time deciding where to put it and moving my orchids. The weather has been glorious and we have made quite a few more changes to our fruit orchard and palm tree forest.

Time spent indoors saw me renew my subscription to the Cornish Association of Queensland and I managed to get back into my 52 Weeks of Genealogical Records in 2014 personal blog challenge. Week 17 is all about Court Records and I have no shortage of personal examples there! I also finished my talk on Australasian probate records for the Queensland Family History Society which was today. A 9.00 am start is a challenge when you live outside of Brisbane but I managed to get there just in time.

First speaker was Saadia Thomson-Dwyer from Queensland State Archives talking about all the wills and intestacy records they have and how to access them. It was a perfect introduction to my talk which looked at the rest of the Australian States and Territories and New Zealand which have similar records. My presentation is as usual on the Resources page of my website, scroll down to Presentations.  Ann Swain followed with UK and Northern Ireland and there is quite a difference between the various countries with Scotland quite different from England and Wales. I must check out the National Archives of Ireland and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland for some of my Irish families as quite a lot has gone online since I last looked. There was morning tea, a lucky door prize, books for sale and time to catch up and chat with old friends. I think there was almost a 100 people there so a great day and I know what they will all be doing for the rest of this long weekend.

Tomorrow we are heading back to Brisbane for the History Alive festival at Fort Lytton which should be really good. I love their advertising - one place, two days, 2000 years of history. There are lectures, reenactments, people going around in everything from medieval wear to colonial uniforms including the American civil war plus an interesting range of food options too.

Monday I am planning a clean up the study day as when things get busy I just stack things - piles of journals to read, a list of emails to answer, online journals and newsletters to read and while doing the preparation of my probates talk I found all kinds of new information on the various websites and in Trove (love the new version 6.1) and Papers Past. That all needs to be added into my family history database.

I have also ordered some new book titles from Unlock the Past and there are quite a few titles that I simply want to sit down and read, not just browse. They should arrive next week just in time for my trip to the Caloundra Family History Research who have invited me up to talk at their June meeting. The Caloundra group have the most amazing purple shirts and I really wanted to join them but couldn't find a house we wanted on the Sunshine Coast. It's not far up the highway from Bribie Island so maybe I can go to some of their meetings!

It is Saturday night and I am home all alone. But when you do genealogy you are never really alone because there will be genie friends on Twitter, Facebook, Google + who will be able to share any genealogy happy dance should I discover anything super exciting from all the probate links I noted today. Happy researching and next Diary will be Wednesday before I head off to Canberra.


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