Mother's Day, In Memoriams & Other News - Genealogy Notes 29 Apr - 6 May 2016

Mother and son, 1987

This weekend is Mother's Day and the only blog post I achieved this week was my Mother's Day 2016 post. My son was born just after Mother's Day and we tend to often celebrate the two events together. This is what we looked like back then and hopefully we will take some more good photos when we catch up on Sunday.

In Memoriam notices can be worth looking for and with Trove's digitised newspapers it is ever so much easier than trying to find them on microfilm. In my Mother's Day blog I have written about the In Memoriam notices that the daughters of my great grandmother Dorcas White wrote to remember their mother, long after she died. Even today the verses are moving and show that Dorcas was a mother greatly loved.

The end of a month always sees me finishing up my blog and article for The In-Depth Genealogist. I have been doing a blog series on Australasian archives and libraries for over 12 months now and the article series is about researching downunder with a different subject each month. It is a great way for me to keep up with what is new and quite often I end up doing some research on one of my own families as they were all over Australia and New Zealand at various times.

As voluntary coordinator of National Family History Month in Australia, I will be busy in August with the launch in Perth and talks here in Queensland. I'm excited to reveal that I will also be celebrating NFHM in New Zealand as I am a speaker at the Auckland Family History Expo. Even more exciting, Dick Eastman is a key speaker and the last time I had the pleasure of meeting Dick was in Auckland at the 2009 AFFHO Congress. It should be a great three days and I will also be giving a talk at the Auckland Library on the Monday. They have a fantastic family history centre there and I am looking forward to seeing it again. A busy August coming up.

Last Diary it was raining and I was about to do some serious filing and catching up on the Spencer family. Most of this information I had gathered over the last few years since we moved to Bribie. I've discovered lots on the family during this time and just kept piling it together and its amazing how much I had forgotten or not looked at closely because of other priorities.

It was only as I cross checked my database and the documents and filed in the binders that I could see how much of the Spencer families lives I have detailed. Thanks to Findmypast I even managed to flesh out a few generations in England. The sad part is that it does not look like there are any males of that Spencer line left in England although there are a few here. So many sons only had daughters or did not have children at all.

Mother and daughter ca 1974

As a female, I am not that interested in male only  lines, my female lines are equally interesting but it is sad to see a family name disappear. This also happened with my White family in Queensland. There are lots of White descendants from the daughters but the sons either did not marry or only had daughters. I'm now starting to look for any similar trends in my other families.

I hope everyone enjoys the Mother's Day weekend as we either visit them or remember them. In this photo Mum and I looked more like sisters and I'm guessing this is about 1974. Pity we didn't put dates, places and names on our photos back then!

Until next time, happy genealogy researching.