We're still travelling and after Canberra we went to our friend's farm in Yarrawonga in northern Victoria where we have been lucky to see the births of some of their new lambs. Also amazing just how many white cockatoos are now in the area along with a few pink galahs.
The head cold I developed in Mount Gambier went to my chest so the last couple of days I haven't even felt like reading my emails or tweeting so I have quite a bit of catching up to do. But our friends have also been taking us round the tourist places and how could I say no to a visit to Rutherglen and some of the old, famous wineries in this area, not to mention the cheese tasting place at All Saints Winery. Today we are off to the Corowa chocolate factory and maybe another winery or two. It's a great gourmet area and I have bought olives, cheeses, spices, sauces etc.
My friend is an avid genealogist too so we have been having some great conversations and I had the chance to see the book she put together after a recent family reunion. I really must finish all my family history 'drafts' - there can always be a second edition!
We have even done a draft strategic plan for discussion at the VAFHO committee meeting next week. I will miss it unfortunately as by then I will be in Brisbane.
But for now I am getting reading for the Irish seminar tomorrow organised by the Wodonga Family History Society. My talk is The Colonial Irish Loved a Beer or Two and the other speaker Professor Geoff Brownrigg is giving two talks on Australian Irish Lives. It should be a great day and Wodonga is always a great audience.
Tomorrow will be a big genealogy day and I am hoping to learn lots to assist researching my own Irish ancestors - I have four great great grandparents who came out to Queensland in the 1860s and 1870s. Stay tuned.
Thursday 28 July 2011
Tuesday 26 July 2011
Genealogy notes 24-26 July 2011 Not Just Ned & Tobruk 1941
We've done a lot of driving over the last few days - after the Unlock the Past history and genealogy expo in Mount Gambier we drove back to Melbourne on the Sunday for a quick change of clothes etc. I managed to finish my review of the expo and then on the Monday we drove up to Canberra. Why a visit to Canberra?
Well this is the last week of the Not Just Ned: A True History of the Irish in Australia exhibition and I have been wanting to see it but we just haven't been able to get to Canberra. Also on at the moment is the Rats of Tobruk 1941 exhibition at the Australian War Memorial, another Canberra exhibition we wanted to see.
We are both nursing head colds from Mount Gambier, so after an early night we were keen to get to the exhibitions but the day started badly. I discovered that somehow I had chipped my front tooth and despite my partner telling me no one would notice, we both knew they would. Fixing it will have to wait until we return to Melbourne.
Our second bit of bad news was a phone call telling us our beloved pet had died unexpectedly in the night and despite wanting to rush home, we knew that would not change anything. So after much tears, we went to the Irish exhibition late morning although I didn't phone my friends at the Museum as I felt I just couldn't talk to anyone at present. We will make another longer visit to Canberra and catch up with friends then.
Anyway the Not Just Ned exhibition at the National Museum of Australia is really spectacular and it is amazing to see what they have brought together for the exhibition which takes at least two hours to walk around. At the end there is a room where you can look at books and computers to trace your own Irish ancestry. Members of the Heraldry & Genealogy Society of Canberra volunteer there on Friday afternoons. I bought the catalogue so I could read more at leisure. Finally there are very useful Irish family history tips on the NMA website.
After that we drove over to the Australian War Memorial and visited the Rats of Tobruk 1941 exhibition, another very worth while exhibition. My uncle was at Tobruk and my partner's father was too so there was a personal interest for both of us. After that we toured the WW2 area of the AWM and managed to also see the light and sound show Striking in the Dark, based around the bombing of Berlin. There are excellent family history resources on the AWM's website and I couldn't resist temptation in the AWM Shop buying Peter Fitzsimon's book Tobruk.
Having seen both exhibitions I now have a list of things I want to follow up on my own Irish and military ancestors - genealogy really is a never ending story!
Well this is the last week of the Not Just Ned: A True History of the Irish in Australia exhibition and I have been wanting to see it but we just haven't been able to get to Canberra. Also on at the moment is the Rats of Tobruk 1941 exhibition at the Australian War Memorial, another Canberra exhibition we wanted to see.
We are both nursing head colds from Mount Gambier, so after an early night we were keen to get to the exhibitions but the day started badly. I discovered that somehow I had chipped my front tooth and despite my partner telling me no one would notice, we both knew they would. Fixing it will have to wait until we return to Melbourne.
Our second bit of bad news was a phone call telling us our beloved pet had died unexpectedly in the night and despite wanting to rush home, we knew that would not change anything. So after much tears, we went to the Irish exhibition late morning although I didn't phone my friends at the Museum as I felt I just couldn't talk to anyone at present. We will make another longer visit to Canberra and catch up with friends then.
Anyway the Not Just Ned exhibition at the National Museum of Australia is really spectacular and it is amazing to see what they have brought together for the exhibition which takes at least two hours to walk around. At the end there is a room where you can look at books and computers to trace your own Irish ancestry. Members of the Heraldry & Genealogy Society of Canberra volunteer there on Friday afternoons. I bought the catalogue so I could read more at leisure. Finally there are very useful Irish family history tips on the NMA website.
After that we drove over to the Australian War Memorial and visited the Rats of Tobruk 1941 exhibition, another very worth while exhibition. My uncle was at Tobruk and my partner's father was too so there was a personal interest for both of us. After that we toured the WW2 area of the AWM and managed to also see the light and sound show Striking in the Dark, based around the bombing of Berlin. There are excellent family history resources on the AWM's website and I couldn't resist temptation in the AWM Shop buying Peter Fitzsimon's book Tobruk.
Having seen both exhibitions I now have a list of things I want to follow up on my own Irish and military ancestors - genealogy really is a never ending story!
Sunday 24 July 2011
Genealogy notes 23 July 2011 genealogy expos continued
Today was Day 2 of the Unlock the Past history and genealogy expo in Mount Gambier and it was a very cold and wet day. However, there were still enthusiastic attendees arriving as the doors opened and most stayed until the end lecture. I heard lots of positive comments and perhaps the most negative comment over the length of the expo was the cold!
I attended a number of talks and also gave two presentations - my tribute to TROVE and It's Not All Online, the title of one of my books. I was really pleased with the feedback and one lady said that she was amazed at all the things I had suggested for broadening out family history research and thinking laterally. Which is of course, the whole point of all my talks.
As I mentioned yesterday, I am doing a review of the Expo on my own website so will go into more detail in that. With luck and some hard work, it should be finished either later today or tomorrow. I have returned home with a rather severe head cold which makes thinking harder than usual!!
At the end of the day, my cold was really starting to take hold so we declined offers of dinner with other UTP speakers, settled back with a pizza and were in bed by 8pm. So much for the high life on tour with a genealogy expo. Watch out for the Expo blog due soon.
I attended a number of talks and also gave two presentations - my tribute to TROVE and It's Not All Online, the title of one of my books. I was really pleased with the feedback and one lady said that she was amazed at all the things I had suggested for broadening out family history research and thinking laterally. Which is of course, the whole point of all my talks.
As I mentioned yesterday, I am doing a review of the Expo on my own website so will go into more detail in that. With luck and some hard work, it should be finished either later today or tomorrow. I have returned home with a rather severe head cold which makes thinking harder than usual!!
At the end of the day, my cold was really starting to take hold so we declined offers of dinner with other UTP speakers, settled back with a pizza and were in bed by 8pm. So much for the high life on tour with a genealogy expo. Watch out for the Expo blog due soon.
Friday 22 July 2011
Genealogy notes 22 July 2011 - genealogy expos
Yesterday was Day One of the Unlock the Past South Australian and Victorian Border history and genealogy Mount Gambier expo so it was a very big genealogy day. I will be writing up a review of the Expo at the end of Day 2 so I won't go into too much detail now. It will appear on my SHHE Genie Rambles blog.
The venue is a very large school basketball centre which is ideal as all the exhibitors have lots of room and there are even breakout tables on the side. So my first duty was to wander around all the exhibitors and it is a great mix of history, heritage and genealogy with lots of old photos, memorabilia and records and publications to search. The show bag has brochures from most of the exhibitors.
I had two talks during the day - first was my Asylums talk and second was my Google talk - both were well attended and I had lots of questions afterwards. I have another two talks on Day Two.
While I was doing a bit of Tweeting, I was given a handwriting query to solve. It was an entry in the NSW Coroner's Records available on Ancestry.com.au. I couldn't make it out from the photocopy the researcher had but as I have a personal subscription to Ancestry I logged on to see the original entry. It was a long entry of death and the words were all run together - I made out a few more of the words but one word was still elusive.
I asked a few of the other Unlock the Past team but we were all stumped. I then saved the image as a photo and increased the magnification beyond the 200% in Ancestry and that allowed me to easily see what the last word was. It is so easy once you know - the last phrase was 'severe temporary mental aberration' and it was 'temporary' which was the hardest part to decipher. It's always a buzz when you can help someone out.
I attended a few other talks and also did an interview with the local television but I don't think we made the 6pm news. At the end of the day there was a group dinner and an evening musical show with Brenton Manser and the Vanguard. As we didn't get back to the motel until late I didn't have time to write my usual daily blog of an expo. For Mount Gambier it will be a single blog completed after Day Two.
It is now Day Two and I am a little cold here trying to type this blog as the stadium has not yet warmed up. I'm sure today is going to be as good as yesterday. Stay tuned.
The venue is a very large school basketball centre which is ideal as all the exhibitors have lots of room and there are even breakout tables on the side. So my first duty was to wander around all the exhibitors and it is a great mix of history, heritage and genealogy with lots of old photos, memorabilia and records and publications to search. The show bag has brochures from most of the exhibitors.
I had two talks during the day - first was my Asylums talk and second was my Google talk - both were well attended and I had lots of questions afterwards. I have another two talks on Day Two.
While I was doing a bit of Tweeting, I was given a handwriting query to solve. It was an entry in the NSW Coroner's Records available on Ancestry.com.au. I couldn't make it out from the photocopy the researcher had but as I have a personal subscription to Ancestry I logged on to see the original entry. It was a long entry of death and the words were all run together - I made out a few more of the words but one word was still elusive.
I asked a few of the other Unlock the Past team but we were all stumped. I then saved the image as a photo and increased the magnification beyond the 200% in Ancestry and that allowed me to easily see what the last word was. It is so easy once you know - the last phrase was 'severe temporary mental aberration' and it was 'temporary' which was the hardest part to decipher. It's always a buzz when you can help someone out.
I attended a few other talks and also did an interview with the local television but I don't think we made the 6pm news. At the end of the day there was a group dinner and an evening musical show with Brenton Manser and the Vanguard. As we didn't get back to the motel until late I didn't have time to write my usual daily blog of an expo. For Mount Gambier it will be a single blog completed after Day Two.
It is now Day Two and I am a little cold here trying to type this blog as the stadium has not yet warmed up. I'm sure today is going to be as good as yesterday. Stay tuned.
Monday 18 July 2011
Genealogy notes 18 July 2011 Brick wall research
Thank goodness young ones like afternoon naps - so hard to do anything on a laptop when you are playing games, chasing rabbits round the yard or out shopping! Still it is an experience you wouldn't trade for anything.
In my down time I continued having a look at our friend's brick wall that I wrote about the other day. I wasn't sure what the New Zealand connection was but decided to try Papers Past as both the married name and the maiden name are relatively uncommon. Interestingly I picked up some references to her athletic achievements that were reprinted from Sydney papers. The surprise was one of the articles talking about her fiancée and how they were going to be married the following year. The article was from 1919 but she obviously didn't end up marrying him. I wonder why not? Instead she married a man 13 years older than her in 1923, the same year she had their only child.
I then tried TROVE for Australian newspapers but the only additional information came from a funeral notice for her brother who died in 1949 - she is listed as one of the mourners in the family notice. This is long after she is thought to have died - did her brothers and sisters just list her because they weren't sure where she was or did they know she was still alive but not with her husband and child?
I also had some success in both Ancestry and FindMyPast in that I found the young family leaving Australia in 1924 for London (her husband was born in Devon) and then I found them coming back in 1927 - without these indexes and digitised images online it wouldn't be possible to do searches like this. So now I know that they were still together in 1927 and in Australia.
I tried to find out a bit more about the husband and noted that he had enlisted for war service in 1939 although he was 53 and from the immigration records I knew he had been in the British Navy possibly during WWI but that needs more looking into. The National Archives of Australia has digitised the series Service Cards for Petty Officers and Men 1911-1970 and I was able to look at the record myself. He listed as his next of kin his wife and an address for her as well as another woman (a friend) and address for her. Did he know where his wife was or was that just a last known address for her? Was there no divorce? Lots of questions which I will have to talk over with our friends when we get back to Melbourne.
With brick walls it really is a matter of just trying to fill in the missing bits and pieces of information. I find that doing timelines for people can be useful as it readily shows all the available facts not only about the person you are looking for but also those around them. Sometimes if you investigate other family members you will find that elusive bit of information on the one you really seek.
Tomorrow is a kindy day so hoping for a bit more genealogy time but then it would also be good to get out and see some of Adelaide as well. It's hard being a tourist too, so many things I want to do and see!
In my down time I continued having a look at our friend's brick wall that I wrote about the other day. I wasn't sure what the New Zealand connection was but decided to try Papers Past as both the married name and the maiden name are relatively uncommon. Interestingly I picked up some references to her athletic achievements that were reprinted from Sydney papers. The surprise was one of the articles talking about her fiancée and how they were going to be married the following year. The article was from 1919 but she obviously didn't end up marrying him. I wonder why not? Instead she married a man 13 years older than her in 1923, the same year she had their only child.
I then tried TROVE for Australian newspapers but the only additional information came from a funeral notice for her brother who died in 1949 - she is listed as one of the mourners in the family notice. This is long after she is thought to have died - did her brothers and sisters just list her because they weren't sure where she was or did they know she was still alive but not with her husband and child?
I also had some success in both Ancestry and FindMyPast in that I found the young family leaving Australia in 1924 for London (her husband was born in Devon) and then I found them coming back in 1927 - without these indexes and digitised images online it wouldn't be possible to do searches like this. So now I know that they were still together in 1927 and in Australia.
I tried to find out a bit more about the husband and noted that he had enlisted for war service in 1939 although he was 53 and from the immigration records I knew he had been in the British Navy possibly during WWI but that needs more looking into. The National Archives of Australia has digitised the series Service Cards for Petty Officers and Men 1911-1970 and I was able to look at the record myself. He listed as his next of kin his wife and an address for her as well as another woman (a friend) and address for her. Did he know where his wife was or was that just a last known address for her? Was there no divorce? Lots of questions which I will have to talk over with our friends when we get back to Melbourne.
With brick walls it really is a matter of just trying to fill in the missing bits and pieces of information. I find that doing timelines for people can be useful as it readily shows all the available facts not only about the person you are looking for but also those around them. Sometimes if you investigate other family members you will find that elusive bit of information on the one you really seek.
Tomorrow is a kindy day so hoping for a bit more genealogy time but then it would also be good to get out and see some of Adelaide as well. It's hard being a tourist too, so many things I want to do and see!
Sunday 17 July 2011
Genealogy notes 17 July 2011
Sunday was a family day and we don't get many of them as we live away from all our families. However, as we are visiting Adelaide we managed to have brunch with one son and then the rest of the day with another son and his family. Grandchildren seem to grow up very quickly even though we were only here last May!
However eventually they go to bed and I managed to check emails, tweets and Google+ before heading to bed myself. Some of my favourite e-newsletters arrived including UK Lost Cousins, Queensland Family History Society's Snippets and National Archives of Australia's Your Memento.
It was good to see a comment on my Summer blog post for 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History but I also saw that there were two posts on it in Google+ because I also posted notice of the blog there. I'm not sure that, from a recordkeeping perspective, that it is good to have comments on a blog separated - my archival instincts say that all comments should be together so that in the future you can see what the response was. But now that I am thinking about it, people often comment via Twitter and Facebook so perhaps it is a bit muddled anyway. Need to think about that a bit more.
Not sure how much genealogy I'll get to do over the next few days while staying with family - probably more taking photos and videos to capture living family members I suspect, but then that all becomes part of the family history too!
However eventually they go to bed and I managed to check emails, tweets and Google+ before heading to bed myself. Some of my favourite e-newsletters arrived including UK Lost Cousins, Queensland Family History Society's Snippets and National Archives of Australia's Your Memento.
It was good to see a comment on my Summer blog post for 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History but I also saw that there were two posts on it in Google+ because I also posted notice of the blog there. I'm not sure that, from a recordkeeping perspective, that it is good to have comments on a blog separated - my archival instincts say that all comments should be together so that in the future you can see what the response was. But now that I am thinking about it, people often comment via Twitter and Facebook so perhaps it is a bit muddled anyway. Need to think about that a bit more.
Not sure how much genealogy I'll get to do over the next few days while staying with family - probably more taking photos and videos to capture living family members I suspect, but then that all becomes part of the family history too!
Thursday 14 July 2011
Genealogy notes 14 July 2011
Yesterday was a strange sort of day, did a bit of searching on our friend's brick wall that I mentioned last time - mostly rechecking sources that they have already covered. But sometimes a second pair of eyes helps or you use a different search strategy or different spelling variations. Some of the sources I covered included:
Ancestry.com.au trying to pick up a date of death, or mention on an electoral roll
FindMyPast.com.au again looking for electoral rolls
Victorian BDM's - I always check the individual State indexes as well as the Ancestry version - with the online indexes you have to pay unless you have access to the indexes on CD
TROVE - Australian newspaper searching on both married and maiden names, of course if she entered into a de facto relationship or simply changed her name we will never find her!
PapersPast - another newspaper search but this time in New Zealand in case the earthquake story is correct
Rootsweb mailing list archives - I always like to see if anyone else has posted a 'missing person' notice and this did turn up emails from the family but with no success in finding her.
While I was finding references to the family, there was nothing pointing me to where she had gone or when she had died. I decided to park the problem and let ideas come to me. It was about then that the postman arrived bearing the 5th issue of Inside History, a relatively new Australian genealogy magazine. So I decided to break for a cup of tea but that stretched into lunch as I settled down for a good read.
After lunch it was a nice walk down to the library in the 'rare' sunshine and then packing up my talks and bits and pieces for the Unlock the Past South Australian and Victorian Border Expo 22-23 July. We are having a few days in Adelaide before heading back to Mount Gambier for the expo - it's a chance to see the family while we are relatively close or closer!
I'm finding that I'm spending even more time on emails and social media with the advent of Google+ as I get notifications on new connections, when I start looking at the genealogy stream (or other streams) I get sidetracked, much like Twitter sidetracks me with interesting new links and genealogy news. I'm starting to think it is all like television, it it's on, I watch it and don't do anything I should be doing. Might start up a time log but then I will worry about what I might be missing!
Ancestry.com.au trying to pick up a date of death, or mention on an electoral roll
FindMyPast.com.au again looking for electoral rolls
Victorian BDM's - I always check the individual State indexes as well as the Ancestry version - with the online indexes you have to pay unless you have access to the indexes on CD
TROVE - Australian newspaper searching on both married and maiden names, of course if she entered into a de facto relationship or simply changed her name we will never find her!
PapersPast - another newspaper search but this time in New Zealand in case the earthquake story is correct
Rootsweb mailing list archives - I always like to see if anyone else has posted a 'missing person' notice and this did turn up emails from the family but with no success in finding her.
While I was finding references to the family, there was nothing pointing me to where she had gone or when she had died. I decided to park the problem and let ideas come to me. It was about then that the postman arrived bearing the 5th issue of Inside History, a relatively new Australian genealogy magazine. So I decided to break for a cup of tea but that stretched into lunch as I settled down for a good read.
After lunch it was a nice walk down to the library in the 'rare' sunshine and then packing up my talks and bits and pieces for the Unlock the Past South Australian and Victorian Border Expo 22-23 July. We are having a few days in Adelaide before heading back to Mount Gambier for the expo - it's a chance to see the family while we are relatively close or closer!
I'm finding that I'm spending even more time on emails and social media with the advent of Google+ as I get notifications on new connections, when I start looking at the genealogy stream (or other streams) I get sidetracked, much like Twitter sidetracks me with interesting new links and genealogy news. I'm starting to think it is all like television, it it's on, I watch it and don't do anything I should be doing. Might start up a time log but then I will worry about what I might be missing!
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