Cornish Families, 52 Ancestors, Talks & Other News: My Genealogy Week 15-21 February 2022

Still playing catch up this week. There is just so much happening at the moment. I may have overcommitted myself to talks in February and March. Still it is nice to see people in person again as well as via Zoom.

Blogs

Managed to complete Week 6 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - theme Branching Out and Maps - picked my GGG grandfather John Carnegie to write about. Although his life could almost be a book. 

If only we could buy land there now for that price!

Working on Week 7 with theme Branching Out and Landed. As there is no landed gentry in my family ancestors, I have gone more with the idea of obtaining land in a new country. 

Books

Last minute editing changes for my book Australian Genealogy Online. It should be good to go next week from the publisher Unlock the Past.

My thanks to the wonderful editing skills of Rosemary Kopittke. She can spot inconsistencies with words or font sizes at 60 paces I think. The good thing is I learn something new from her every time. 

Conferences

At the weekend I attended the Family History Show and listened to some great talks by Debbie Kennett, Mia Bennett and others. In the Goody Bag there was a compendium of all the Discover Your Ancestors monthly magazine for 2015. Just what I wanted - more emagazines to read. Still a great gift which cost me nothing as I received a free ticket to attend as a subscriber to The Genealogist. 

RootsTech Connect is just a week away now so I hope you have registered. It is free. The Relatives at RootsTech feature indicates that I have 50 relatives attending so far. However they are all in the US and no closer than 6th cousin. But they might help to explain some of those more distant DNA matches. Plus more people may register over the next week.

Family Stories

Putting the finishing touches to the family history of the Spencer Family of Cosby, Leicester and Max wants several copies done for his family. 

It was good to print a paper copy for last minute amendments, corrections and whatever other changes were needed. I seem to see errors and inconsistencies more when reading a paper copy than an ecopy. Not sure why, may be just a habit I can't shake.

Talks

My 2022 talk fest continues and you can always see where I am speaking on the Events pages of my website.

The Why Can't I Find It? talk at Caloundra Family History Research ended up being via Zoom. I had been looking forward to seeing everyone again in person. That said, it was still a good session and I think they all went away with some new ideas. 

I still have my membership cup!

My talk on the Cornish in Queensland to the Cornish Association of Victoria via Zoom also received good feedback. There were questions about how/why I try to see myself in the places of my ancestors through images, books and newspaper accounts. To me context is important - we need to know what their lives were like, otherwise they are just names, dates and places. It was lovely to see faces from my days of living in Melbourne. 

Where appropriate slides from my presentations are on the Resources page of my website. I have done this for the last 10 years as I know how hard it is to listen and write at the same time. The slides are for personal research use only NOT to download and hand around the place or put up on other websites. I try to make it easy for my listeners to just sit back and enjoy my talks. The copyright is still mine and anyone who wants the slides for another purpose should ask me. Rant over.

Twitter

It was fun and interesting to be part of the first @ANZAncestryTime on Twitter for 2022. It is now only on the 3rd Tuesday night of the month starting at 6pm Brisbane time. Why not come along and be part of the online discussion and share your family stories and knowledge with others. We use the hash tag #ANZAncestryTime to keep all the tweets together and Sue @tasteach writes up the summary for us. 

What's Coming Up?

I'm currently busy with my talk on Australasian probate records for THE Genealogy Show in April. Not only to I have to write and present the talk, I have to prerecord it. 

There is something strange about sitting in a room and delivering a presentation to yourself and trying not to watch yourself in the camera. It usually takes a few attempts and I have to try not to run over time. 

As I mentioned earlier, RootsTech Connect is not far away but my two talks for that have already been recorded and are waiting to go live. I will be checking the chat for both talks during the weekend. If you want to learn more about mining ancestors and using the National Archives of Australia online catalogue come along to RootsTech. Registration is free.

March has another three talks - all live with one in person for Moreton Libraries and the other two via Zoom. 

Stay safe, take care and keep on genearesearching. Until next time, Shauna