Genealogy Notes 15-22 October 2014 Geneacruising again

Most of the last week I have been reviewing my talks for the 6th Unlock the Past cruise which is a three night cruise out of Sydney which is basically a genealogy conference at sea. So no sightseeing or foreign ports but lots of genealogy talks and research help sessions. I will be giving 5 talks over 3 days and I am not the only speaker so definitely full on for all attendees. A blog report will follow in early November.

Why so long to wait? Well straight after the cruise I am heading over to Norfolk Island for the Unlock the Past history and genealogy conference. We will be on the Island for 5 nights and the conference itself is only 3 days so plenty of time for sightseeing although I have been to Norfolk before. Again I will be doing 5 talks in 3 days so no rest for the wicked although I suspect that is really no rest for the geneaddicted. Again a blog report will follow in early November as I am not sure what internet access I will have or how much spare time there will be.

This is my last geneafling for 2014 so I am going the whole geneahog. I do hope Geniaus is reading this as I would love to see myself credited with a new genea word in her geneadictionary.

The other thing I have been doing is trying to avoid seeing comments by geneamates on Nathan Goodwin's forensic genealogy novels which I have been given to review. I hate spoilers so I will need to think about how to review a novel without giving it all away. So far everyone has said they can't put it down so I am thinking of reading them when I get back after all my geneadistractions.

Week 25 Immigration records in my 52 Weeks of Genealogical Records in 2014 was completed but there won't be another post in that series until early November. That week is also my birthday and Melbourne Cup so perhaps I should not be promising too much as it usually is a party week for me.

I can go for weeks with no one asking me to do anything and then all of a sudden everything happens. This week I have seen requests to speak next year, a request for research from someone, to do some more articles for magazines (Inside History Magazine) and I still have two more to go for Irish Lives Remembered and I have agreed to write another course in the Australian certificate for the National Institute for Genealogical Studies. I learnt a lot from writing the last one I did and this time around I will be more familiar with their requirements and style etc. So lots of interesting things to finish the year with.

I have one more talk for the Genealogical Society of Queensland on 22 November in Brisbane and I have two papers to write for the AFFHO Congress 2015 due before 30 November so my birthday month is shaping up to be very busy. The Congress early bird closes on 31 October and it really is the genealogy conference not to miss (only every 3 years) and Canberra in March is simply stunning with all those autumn colours we don't see here in the north. 

Well time to go and pack and get myself totally organised for an early morning flight to Sydney and 8 days of genealogy fun and some fantastic sightseeing on Norfolk Island. Stay tuned for my return and reports on all the geneaction. Sorry couldn't help myself! Happy researching until next time.

Genealogy notes 8-14 October 2014 - More Great Seminars & Backing Up

Since last Diary I have had a great time on the Gold Coast at the Angling for Ancestors genealogy seminar. It was a great opportunity to catch up with old friends and to hear some great talks. My report on the seminar is here and fellow geneablogger Helen Smith also did a report and you can read it here.

I was all set up to tweet and Facebook this seminar as usually I am a speaker and don't get the chance to just sit back and do comments while in progress. However I was a tad over eager - I put my fully charged mobile wifi and Ipad in my handbag the night before so that I would not forget them. It was a bit of a rush in the morning so I did not check that all was ok. Sadly somehow the on button on my wifi was activated in my handbag and when I pulled it out to start tweeting I realised it was about to go flat! Of course, the charger was back home. Just as well I still had by trusty pen and notebook.

Over the years I have been watching the developments in the big subscription databases such as GenesReunited, Ancestry.com.au, MyHeritage and Findmypast.com.au and the amount of indexed and digitised records continues to grow. But what is also fascinating is how they have become more interactive and allow people to store their family information online and put them in touch with others researching the same families.

Early on I put my family data into Genes Reunited and have had many many contacts over the years. I had limited information in Ancestry for years but earlier this year I put all of my information there although I still maintain a separate genealogy program which has all the up to date information and sources etc. As with Genes Reunited, I have found relatives this way and shared information.

I have limited information in MyHeritage but it put me in touch with relatives in Ireland that I suspect I would never have found any other way or certainly not as easily. This is a program that I want to look at more but at the moment I have been looking at Findmypast's family trees which I first put data into back in 2012. I have just uploaded a gedcom of Max's families and it only took one minute and 44 seconds to load nearly 2000 people. I certainly could not re-enter that data anywhere near as quick. Plus you can attach records, photos and it will even calculate kinship for you. Read about the new and improved Findmypast family tree here.

Now that we are living in Queensland Max is interested in knowing more about his mother's Queensland family although he does already know some of his cousins. Surprisingly we have also found that his paternal grandfather has family here too. We have chosen the public option as we want people to find us but have also chosen to suppress the living.

So why have your data in so many places (and there are more choices than those listed here)? Because I have found relatives in all four of these subscription sites it shows that people are choosing different systems but if you only use one of them, you miss the others. Full membership of all four of them is expensive although you can choose free or limited options and of course, some of them are also available to use in libraries.

If anything happens to my laptop, or my backup disk, or my remote hard drive, at least some of my data is available on all of these sites. However I also use BackupMyTree which is a free MyHeritage application which allows me to store my data online (outside of MyHeritage) and there is no public access to it. Another plus is that each time I update my genealogy software program it automatically syncs to BackupMyTree.

So my data is retrievable (although the scanning of my photos and documents continues) and we are waiting for other family members to contact us, hopefully. Whenever I start playing with my own families, you know that I am procrastinating and this time it is finalising my new research guide for Unlock the Past. I always agonise in the final stages of a guide, am I too boring, have I missed something, got it wrong or whatever else. Fortunately their wonderful editor usually soothes all those silly nerves.

There will be one more Diary before we are off on the next Unlock the Past cruise and the Norfolk Island history and genealogy conference. Happy researching until then.

Genealogy Notes 1-7 Oct 2014 Online but Not Online

Another super big week but a highlight was the Queensland Family History Society seminar on asylums, prisons and hospitals at the weekend. I gave two talks Family Skeletons or Just Old and Sick: Looking at Asylum Records and Missing an Ancestor? Try Looking Behind Bars. As usual both my presentations are on the Resources page of my website, scroll down to Presentations. The other speaker was Pauleen Cass on hospital records and her presentation can be found on her blog Family History Across the Seas under the Presentation page.

Alex (Family Tree Frog) has done an in-depth review of the day (read it here) so I won't repeat any of that here. What I do want to say is that I took the opportunity to do a quick survey of the audience and their online habits. When asked the general question is everybody online most hands went up, although surprisingly a few people still don't use computers. My next questions were about who used Twitter, read or wrote blogs, Google+ and Facebook and Facebook was the only one where more than a few hands went up. It seems that most only used their computers for email, web searching and not for social media although both Pauleen and I did try to encourage them during the day.

I also took the opportunity to mention that Pauleen, Jill Ball (aka Geniaus) and myself are the official bloggers for Congress 2015 in Canberra in March 2015. This is the must attend genealogy event in Australia/New Zealand every three years. We will be using social media to promote Congress and its wonderful sponsors over the coming months. But if people don't use social media it is hard for us to get all the exciting messages out in a timely way.

After every talk I usually pick up a few followers or my blogs are viewed by more people so obviously some people do go home and at least have a look. I have been using social media for just over five years now and can't imagine how I could possibly learn about all the great new resources without finding out through social media. In Australia the genealogy community does not seem to have embraced social media. Do people know what they are missing out on?

I noticed this lack of engagement with social media during National Family History Month too. Or have I got it wrong? Is it there and I just haven't picked up on who to follow?

Pauleen also took the opportunity to mention that we are both members of the Kiva Genealogists for Families project and it was good to see a few other hands go up for that. If you would like to join us follow this link. $25 can make a big difference to other families and I have relent my $25 over and over.

A great day. QFHS have really embraced the online world - they even sent Pauleen and I virtual thank you cards by email using Jacquie Lawson notecards.

This coming weekend I have the Angling for Ancestors genealogy weekend with the Gold Coast Family History Society with key speakers Jan Gow QSM and Graham Jaunay. I am not speaking so will be quietly sitting back and absorbing the knowledge. There will be a review of the day coming up next week.

Week 24 of my personal genealogy blog challenge is on post office directories - read about it here.

My LibraryThing cataloging is going slowly and having to do three trips to Brisbane took away a lot of time. It is not that far but an hour there and back plus time waiting around for appointments means that virtually a whole day is gone by the time we get back.  Now that the weather is so gorgeous I have been swimming every day and doing some more gardening. No rain also means time spent hosing all our gardens, thank goodness we have bore water.

It is just over a week until my next Unlock the Past cruise so the focus will be finalising my five talks for that plus I have another five talks for the Norfolk Island conference to finalise too. My two papers for Congress 2015 are due at the end of November and while I have been thinking about them  I have yet to put pen to paper, or finger to keyboard to be more specific.

Amazing how fast this year has gone. Until next week, enjoy your genealogy research and why not try and encourage more of our Aussie geneamates to try social media. If we all recruited just one person that would make a difference. Until next time.

Genealogy Notes 23-30 Sep 2014 - LibraryThing & Guest Blogging

Extreme satisfaction this week as I am finally tackling something that has been on my To Do list for years if not decades. But more on that later. First up I want to start with some blogging news. Week 23 Electoral Rolls was this week's challenge in my personal genealogy blog challenge 52 Weeks of Genealogical Records in 2014. I am a big fan of electoral rolls for solving where people move to.

I also did a guest blog for the Genealogical Society of Queensland and took the opportunity to convince a few more people to start blogging their family stories. Read my post here. It really is a fantastic way to find lost lost relatives and get to know other Geneabloggers.

From time to time I am asked to do a book review and past reviews can be seen on the Resources page of my website (towards the end of the page). My next book review is a bit out of the ordinary as I have been asked to review one of Nathan Goodwin's genealogical crime mysteries which sounds absolutely fascinating. Hiding the Past is Nathan's first book in this series and a review on Amazon said A good reminder that you just never know what you will find once you embark on an ancestral hunt! I know that feeling so looking forward to a good read.

Which brings me to what I have been doing most of the week.

In the last 40 years since I left home, I have carted my genealogy, history and other cannot part with books, including novels and cookery books from home to home, city to city, state to state. Packing up and moving nine times you tend to jettison a lot of stuff along the way, so I hate to think what my house would have been like if I had not had a wanderlust.

So now that we are in the home we are never moving from, I am fulfilling my lifelong ambition to have all my books catalogued and easily findable no matter what bookcase they are in throughout the house. One of the attractions of this house was that two walls of the study have built in book cases, in fact I could not go past this house once I had seen the study which also overlooks the swimming pool area and our palm and fruit orchard. Although the birds are a bit of a distraction!

Over the years people have given me all kinds of suggestions on how to do this but I have gone with LibraryThing which is free and many geneafriends also use. I think there is something nice about being able to see (virtually) what other people have on their bookshelves and already I have two LibraryThing friends.

Setting up the account is easy and to add your books you simply select a group of libraries that you think will have the books and then you enter the ISBN and hopefully one of your libraries has the book and you get all the library cataloguing details which saves a lot of keying in of author names, titles etc. You can add your own tags and there is a private comments field where I enter the Bookcase number and shelf number.

I gave all the bookcases and shelves numbers which allows me to know which shelf a particular book is located on. Many of my research guides and other finding aids are small pamphlett size and hard to spot so this means I will be able to grab something quickly once I look it up on LibraryThing.

So all very positive and exciting and somewhat addictive. I have spent hours doing this and rearranging my books. But like everything, there are two sides to cataloguing your library collection.

I am using the National Library of Australia (NLA) as my main library choice with support from various State Libraries for my Australian books and similar libraries overseas for my New Zealand, UK and USA books. With legal deposit I expected to find most of my books in the NLA or the relevant State Library but I am surprised at how many of my books are not where I expect a copy to be held. With one of my books, in desperation I tried the University of Queensland and they had a copy so universities are now my fall back position.

You can enter books in manually but I prefer to have all the cataloguing details as well and it is quicker if you can find it already in a library somewhere.

But that is not what is taking me the longest time. I am rediscovering each and every one of my genealogy reference books and some of them are quite ancient and precomputer and internet times. It is fascinating to read them and see how we did genealogy in those far off days. At one point I was going to say they were all superseded and simply toss them, but there is some good advice and the records are the same, just the way we look for things has changed. So the weeding and decluttering  is not quite going to plan.

It will probably take me months to do all of my books so I will give updates from time to time on progress. LibraryThing is my new best friend and we won't be parted anytime soon!

For those in Brisbane don't forget the Queensland Family History Society seminar on Saturday with Pauleen Cass (Family History Across the Seas) and myself talking about asylums, hospitals and prisons. Should be a great seminar and if you are in the Gold Coast area, I am also attending the Angling for Ancestors seminar although I am not talking. Graham Jaunay and Jan Gow are the two speakers for that day long genealogy fest so I can just sit back and soak up all their genealogy knowledge! Blog posts to come on both seminars.

Until next week, happy genealogy searching or in my case, LibraryThing.

Genealogy Notes 15-22 Sep 2014 more lovely awards & great blogs

Well it has been a big week for receiving some wonderful tributes for my blogs and my presentations. First up I received a One Lovely Blog Award from Alex Daw (Family Tree Frog) for this Diary blog and if you have not seen my response, read it here. My second One Lovely Blog Award was from Helen Smith (Helen Smith's Keyboard) for my other family oriented blog SHHE Genie Rambles and my response is here.

As part of the Awards we each nominate other blogs that we like to read or admire and that  way we all get to find out about all the fantastic blogs out there. It really is good to see so many people using blogs to tell their family stories and make them accessible via Google.

The highlight of my week was finding out that I was the Gold Medalist Rock Star Genealogist in Australia and New Zealand in John Reid's (Canada's Anglo Celtic Connections) annual survey. The Top Ten list for ANZ is also a line up of some of our best bloggers and speakers although a few northerners also made the list probably due to their down under tours with Unlock the Past in the last few years.

All this recognition has inspired me to get back to blogging and I have managed to restart my personal genealogy blog challenge 52 Weeks of Genealogical Records in 2014. Week 22 is on Family Letters and Correspondence and I share two family letters that I am fortunate to have found during my research.

My next big project is a new research guide and I am trying to get a section each day as well as finalise my two talks for the Queensland Family History Society seminar on 4 October. One talk is on asylum records and I have done a version of this presentation on a number of occasions as it is based on my guide My Ancestor Was In An Asylum: Brief Guide to Asylum Records in Australia and New Zealand.

My second talk is on prison records and I was surprised to find that the last time that I only spoke about prison records was in 2002! Normally I combine it with convict records so my October talk is a reworked version of one of my most popular talks over a decade ago. It has been interesting updating it (although my family stories haven't changed) but so much has changed online!

My talks for the next Unlock the Past genealogy cruise and Norfolk Island genealogy conference in late October are also done but I will probably keep tweaking them between now and then. I have a couple of new talks which is always a little nerve wracking as you never know if people will like them and find them useful.

At the weekend I took my own advice and finally decided to tackle my Irish brick walls (yet again). In 37 years of researching I have yet to learn anything more about my Irish GGG grandparents apart from their names.In my brick wall talks I tell people to try tracing siblings if you can't track back a direct ancestor so over the years I have managed to identify some siblings but never traced them.

So using the National Archives of Ireland for wills and census records, Findmypast for a wide range of Irish records for County Wicklow, FamilySearch, Ancestry and Roots Ireland I managed to put together a reasonable framework for two of the siblings. If I purchase marriage certificates it should prove they are siblings but that won't advance me back. It is unfortunate that Irish death certificates are not more informative. I now have possible deaths for all four of my Wicklow GGG grandparents but unless a family member was an informant purchasing a copy may not actually confirm it.

I have always been a bit of a gambler so I will apply for photocopies (the cheaper option to certificates) and see what I get. Nothing ventured nothing gained so wish me luck. I still have to look at my four GGG grandparents in Northern Ireland but that will have to wait for another free weekend.

There have been lots of useful Tweets and Facebook posts too and quite a lot of these are picked up in Geniaus' The Australian Genealogists Daily which I subscribed too as it usually provides a good snapshot of relevant tweets.

Time for some lunch and exercise - some days it is too easy just to sit at the laptop and do that last bit of research or read one more blog or check Twitter for new sites! Until next time happy researching.

Genealogy Notes 5-14 Sep 2014 exciting new resources

Just back from a relaxing week long holiday at Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast where I revisited many of my childhood holiday haunts. Over 50 years on there is a lot of change but it is amazing how simply being in a place can bring back memories long forgotten. But then some things haven't changed and you wonder how they have survived all the development around them. Fleay's Wildlife Park is now under National Parks Management and surrounded by suburbia but is an amazing refuge for some endangered species and they still have their platypus display, one of my most vivid childhood memories.

The only genealogy (apart from childhood memories) I did was to check in with Twitter and Facebook each morning to note any exciting news (more in a moment) and to take time to vote in John Reid's (Canada's Anglo Celtic Connections) Rockstar Genealogists survey. Voting is now closed so it will be interesting to see the results of his third year of doing this global survey. The other thing I had to do was thank Alex Daw (Family Tree Frog) for nominating Diary for a Lovely Blog Award - see my response here.

I know some people think that spending time on social media is a waste of time but it is where I catch up with most of my genealogy news. For example, through Facebook I found out that Findmypast.com.au now has the NSW will and testament books online from 1800 to 1952. Totally fantastic news and now that I am home, looking forward to some serious searching.

Another exciting resource is the 1894 and 1897 women's suffrage petitions which were indexed by the Queensland Family History Society in a project with the Queensland Parliament and now all online to search free. Again discovered via Facebook.

Through Cassmob's blog Family History Across the Seas, I discovered that Diary was listed in Jill Ball's (Geniaus) list of  50 Best Genealogy Blogs published in the latest issue of Inside History Magazine. Given that I was away from home, I had to wait patiently till we got home and collected our mail. There are some great blogs on the list and I don't know how Jill manages to keep it to 50. It is an honour to be among such great company.

One of my Twitter discoveries was Connected Histories 22 digital resources for British History 1500-1900 and one of the ways I pick up these genealogy tweets is by looking at Jill's The Australian Genealogists Daily. I find this so useful as a catch up that I retweet it each day and also post it to Facebook.

This weekend was the NSW & ACT Association of Family History Societies annual conference and this year it was hosted by the Illawarra Family History Group with the theme Illawarra Remembers 1914-2014. This is a conference that I try to get to every other year and as I went to the one in Canberra last year, Illawarra was just a little too hard to get to this year. However, next year it is being hosted by the Port Macquarie & District Family History Society which is where we almost settled. I think everyone enjoyed the conference as I have seen some very happy faces on Facebook.

This coming week I have to seriously finish all my talks for the Unlock the Past 6th cruise in October (5 talks) after which I am going to the UTP Norfolk Island Conference (another 5 talks). Some are revamped talks but I am also doing some totally new talks and that takes a good deal of preparation.

I also want to get back to my personal blog challenge 52 Weeks of Genealogical Records in 2014 and regular Diary updates. And perhaps a spot of research with some of those lovely new resources. Happy researching until next time.

Lovely Blog Award

Diary is usually my blog for my genealogy news and adventures and my other blog SHHE Genie Rambles is where I place all my personal stories and write about my families. However I have to make an exception as my long time geneafriend Alex Daw of Family Tree Frog has nominated Diary for a Lovely Blog Award which is really exciting. Alex's enthusiasm for genealogy is as keen as mine and it is always terrific to visit her library and give talks to all her genealogy library members. Thanks Alex.

Here are the Rules for the "One Lovely Blog Award":

1. Thank the person who nominated you and link to that blog
2. Share Seven things about yourself - refer below
3. Nominate 15 bloggers you admire (or as many as you can think of!) - also listed below
4. Contact your bloggers to let them know that you've tagged them for the One Lovely Blog Award

Seven things about me:

1. Throughout my adult life, I have moved around a lot (at least 9 homes and 3 cities) and recently settled into our 'retirement' house on Bribie Island. Will it be the last? 

2. Our family always had a thing about visiting animal sanctuaries and it is something that I still do. And yes that is my one and only baby brother.

3. I always wanted to be a librarian but after leaving school I applied to the Brisbane City Council for a library position but was told that I was not the kind of person who worked in libraries. Disappointed I joined the Queensland Public Service, got married and a few years later discovered genealogy, which totally changed my life and a few years further on again, I found myself working at the State Library of Queensland with the person who told me that I was not the kind of person who worked in libraries. Small world!

4. Fishing is another one of those long term passions I seem to have inherited and my father was a keen fisherman all his life. He would have really loved the boat we recently purchased to fish around Bribie Island which is where Dad first taught me to fish.

5. Another lifelong passion is reading and I can read anything but losing myself in a good book is a fantastic way to spend a few hours. Over the years I have bought thousands and every time I move, lots go to the local charities. I have always been a member of a library and regularly borrow books but somehow having to give them back seems wrong. Which is probably why I keep buying books! 

6. My son seems to be following in my footsteps and I do not expect to see grandchildren any time soon. My parents used to despair that they were never going to be grandparents as both my brother and I were tardy but then we did not know that cancer would come along and take those years from our father. One of my favourite shots of Dad taking photos of my son dancing with Mum at my brother's wedding.

7. Travel is also something that I have done all my life and I am currently writing this in a unit at Surfers Paradise where I used to go with my family in the early to mid 1960s. It does not seem like 50 something years ago but then I look outside the window and yep, a lot of years have changed this place. Amazingly the Pink Poodle is still here!

6 Bloggers I admire

This is tricky as the genealogy blogging world is a very supporting community and many of the people I regularly read have already been nominated . I tend not to read other blogs as I simply do not have the time but one area that I do dip into is Australian history. So although I am allowed to nominate up to 15 bloggers, I am going to do 3 history and 3 genealogy. But check out everyone who has been nominated for a Lovely Blog Award as there are hundreds and hundreds of interesting blogs out there.

1. Stumbling Through the Past by Yvonne Perkins - Yvonne has just moved to Singapore and fortunately we met at the Australian Historical Association conference in Brisbane in July 2014 just before she left. Yvonne's posts often alert me to new Australian history books that I want to read and exhibitions that I might want to go to as well as all kinds of other Australian history news. 

2. History and Philosophy in Queensland by Neville Buch - This is a brand new blog with only the Welcome blog and a piece on why it has been set up. However it is one that I intend to follow as I recently met Neville through the Professional Historians Association of Queensland and again at the AHA conference in July. We have been discussing the value of blogging and social media and the lack of it within the professional history arena in Queensland so I hope that his fellow Queensland historians take note. 

3. Historians Are Past Caring by Marion Diamond - Marion was one of my Australian History lecturers at the University of Queensland and I managed to meet up with her at the AHA conference in July and personally tell her how much I like reading her posts. She did not remember me, not surprisingly amongst all those students she must have had, but her lectures were always interesting and I am happy to say her blog posts are equally interesting.

4. Geneabloggers by Thomas MacEntee - this has probably been nominated by many others but it is almost the bible for anyone wanting to find a blog, look for blogging prompts or simply to find out what is happening in the blogging world. 

5. Inside History Magazine Blog by Cassie Mercer - one of my favourite history and genealogy magazines all rolled into one and often they feature past stories as guest blogs. This allows the stories a much wider audience as Google can search them and I have had some amazing feedback on stories I wrote that were published a couple of years ago but are now more accessible online.

6. The British GENES Blog (GEnealogy News and EventS) by Chris Paton - I have had the pleasure of meeting Chris a number of times on his trips down under and find his blog an excellent way to keep up with all the news in the UK. 

One final word from me, if you have not tried blogging your family stories, why not think about it. The new family contacts and new friends both in person and online have all made blogging a fantastic experience for me. Thanks again Alex for nominating me for the Lovely Blog Award.