2023 ending, 2024 beginning & what's new: My genealogy weeks 15 - 31 December 2023

2023 went by in a blur. So many great things happened and keeping this Diary helps me to remember just how much I do in a year. 

Blogs

Jill Ball aka Geniaus has again offered her Accentuate the Positive Geneameme for 2023. Another great way to think about what happened in your genealogy research in 2023. Read my response here.

I have a guest blog for the Genealogical Society of Queensland coming up in January. The big question as always, will be what to write about.

Books & Magazines

For various reasons my attention has been drawn to Charles Dickens and his association with Australia. To my shame, I suspect, I have only ever read Great Expectations for school. To redress this I am currently reading Tom Keneally's That Dickens Boy. Not quite a Charles Dickens novel but a great insight into the Dickens family. It may even inspire me to read a real Dickens book again.

Books are piling up around me, season gifts and Ph D works plus the number on my IPad is growing at an alarming rate. It seems I may have been converted to the convenience of the ebook. 

Also using Moreton Region libraries more and their app Libby which lets me read all those genealogy magazines as part of my library subscription. Not to mention all the ebooks they have.

Conferences

Not too many on my horizon this year. However, there are lots of webinars and online sessions that I can catch up on. 

Legacy Family Tree Webinars have just announced their 2024 program. Good to see the Down Under series continues with some good Aussie/Kiwi speakers. You can register to watch live for the whole year and its free to watch for the first week after the session. Check it out here.

New Resources

The Australian Home Beautiful
Vol 29 No 7 July 1950

Findmypast added new Kent records, plus opened up more redacted entries in the 1939 Register. There are almost 188,000 of these previously closed records now open. Family history is indeed never ending. Over 90,000 more newspaper pages have been added.   

Trove Treasure in December 2023 and January 2024 and for all our holiday cooking, they have now digitised over 100 classic cookbooks. Confession time. I can spend hours looking at cookbooks, not necessarily cooking, just looking. I can't wait to explore this new collection of cookbooks. 

Or you could read all those wonderful magazines that have also been digitised. Remember the 1950s and all those wonderful hot winter puddings. I loved the pineapple upside down cakes although mine never quite looked like the recipe image.

Over 800,000 images were added to Trove in 2022-2023. More will be coming in 2024 and here is a preview list. Good to see the community cooperation between Trove and regional genealogy societies as well as school and local history groups.

NSW

• Border Morning Mail (1952) [Albury City Libraries]
• Coolamon Farmers' Review (1910-1917) [Coolamon and District History Group]
• Coolamon-Ganmain Farmers' Review (1906-1910, 1917-1918) [Coolamon and District History Group]
• The Pastoral Times and Deniliquin Telegraph (1895-1950) [Deniliquin Genealogy Society Inc]
• The Seagull (1957-2015) [Tweed River High School]

SA

• Australijos Lietuvis - The Australian Lithuanian (1948-1956) [Australian Lithuanian Archives]
• People's Weekly (1890-1926) [State Library of South Australia]
• Port Lincoln Times (1982-1986) [Port Lincoln History Group]
• Seasider (1956-1963) [National Trust of SA - Wilunga Branch]
• South East Kingston Leader (1962-1976) [Kingston Branch of the National Trust of SA]
• The Standard (1959-1965) [Prospect Local History Group]

VIC

• Gippsland Farmers' and Glengarry, Toongabbie and Cowwarr Journal (1923) [Latrobe City Libraries]
• Sun News Pictorial (1922-1954) [State Library Victoria]
• The Journal: Glengarry, Toongabbie and Cowwarr journal (1923-1929) [Latrobe City Libraries]
• Yarrawonga Mercury and Lake Rowan, Tungamah and Mulwala News (1882) [Yarrawonga Mulwala Historical Society Inc]
• Yarrawonga Mercury and Mulwala News (1882-1897) [Yarrawonga Mulwala Historical Society Inc]
• Yarrawonga Mercury and Southern Riverina Advertiser (1897-1905, 1921-1927) [Yarrawonga Mulwala Historical Society Inc]

Talks

My list of talks for 2024 so far are now up on the Events page of my website. As usual I am looking forward to presenting and catching up with friends at these events.

My Genie Chat sessions here on Bribie are continuing in 2024 and the first term will look at English genealogy.

What's Coming Up?

January is traditionally a quiet time and there are lots of little catch up tasks on my list. Like sorting out all my travel and family photos from this year. I tend to download them into subject folders and promise myself I will get back to delete the not so good and identify the ones I want to keep. No surprises but I rarely do that so I have quite a bit of tidying up just in my photo folders.

Alice Price and her daughters

I could mention the scanning word, but there are too many projects there. I managed to sort Mum's photos into categories and give my brother some that related to his children. But the little piles of scanning are still sitting on the shelf behind me. In the photo above I am reasonably sure that my son could not identify anyone. Even I'm not sure if that is Mum on the far left, she was a lot younger than her siblings. I do know the rest - from left to right Alice Price nee White, her daughter Beryl, daughter in law Peggy, daughter Mavis and daughter Hazel. 

The Genealogy Squad and Cyndi Ingles has her Filing Friday Facebook challenge and occasionally I have set aside a Friday to just tackle things like filing and scanning. Could I keep it up every week? No for starters the Bribie Family History Association has its monthly meeting on the first Friday. Then there is lunch afterwards. But 3 out of 4 Fridays might make a difference to my photo projects. Have a look at their last post for 2023 and the plan for 2024.

Thank you to all my readers over the year - I have not been as regular with blogging as I hoped. Travel took up quite a few weeks and you can follow those travels through my Facebook page. Your ongoing support of this blog is very much appreciated.

I hope that you have all had a fabulous genealogy time in 2023 and that 2024 will be equally fabulous. Stay safe and well until next time, Shauna

Parties, Books & Other News: My Genealogy Weeks 21 November - 14 December 2023

 It's party season as every society and group wind down for December and January. 

One of my new projects in the latter half of the year was setting up Genie Chats where a group of locals join me for 90 minutes on Zoom on a Wednesday morning. We record the sessions for those who can't make that time. I decided to throw a Christmas morning tea at my place and it was good to catch up with all those who attended. Lot's of great food and I think when we say 'bring a plate' it should be 'bring a small plate'. But all delicious and the weather was kind.

Dessert at the
Slimmers Christmas party

Also attended the Bribie Family History Association lunch at Botanic at Bribie RSL. We occupied two tables and again great chats and delicious food and drinks. 

The Bribie Slimmers lunch was chicken and ham with potatoes, pumpkin, beans and gravy. For dessert there was the most delicious pavlova. 

Then there was the Bribie Island Historical Society party which was catered by the RSL. The fish fry was magical and all the other plates of hot food and sandwiches were nice. The bar had white and red wine flowing but the orange juice ran out quickly. Less people are drinking and of course, someone has to drive home.

Blogs

As per usual, I am participating in Jill Ball's annual geneameme Accentuate the Positive which is a recap of our genealogical highlights during the year. I'm part way throught with some questions easier to answer than others. I hope to finish it by Christmas.

Another annual blog challenge I accept is the Genealogical Society of Queensland's guest bloggers list. The lovely Bobbie has me signed up for two guest blogs - one in January and one in June.

I do seem to have lost my blogging mojo. Instead of writing up family stories as a blog post, I am more concentrated on my draft family histories which are largely written. The hard part is adding in sources and adding citations which weren't noted at the time I wrote the draft. I'm getting there but the moral of this story is, note your citations as you go. Ever so much easier.

Books

I have bought more books in the last month than I have all year. Many of them are connected to my PhD research but also some for pleasure. Plus as our local library was closing for a couple of months for building renovation, I ordered in a number of books. Fascinating. Searching the catalogue turned up books in other Moreton libraries which I probably would not have looked for. 

Plus I have to read our designated text for the Bribie Family History Association book club, Graham Robb's The Ancient Paths. 

Thank goodness I don't have anything on for the rest of December and January.

DNA

No new exciting big matches but lots of little ones (over 20cM) are helping me to fill out Dad's side of the family. I am reasonably sure where we fit into those families but it would be good to have a nice Y match. 

Mum's DNA is continuing to throw up Welsh matches and yet I don't have any Welsh in the paper trail. Am I looking at some non parental event or is it further back on a line where I have a brick wall. Something to explore more in 2024.

Family

Christmas dinner last year
in Sweden

Hard to believe but this time last year I was on my way to my son's place in Sweden. My hopes for a white Christmas were dashed but it was frosty. Meeting my little grandson was the highlight of the year. 

The plan for 2024 is to visit them in May when both my grandson and my son celebrate their birthdays. In the meantime I have watched his first steps and now see him marching round the house as if he owns it. Amazing how quick he learnt to walk and he is definitely an active child.

New Resources

Another thing that continually amazes me is all the new records that are added each month to the various online sites. Trove had a downtime of 2 whole days and it was then that I realised I am addicted to Trove. Every day I find myself looking for something for my own genealogy, or a talk I am planning to give or my Ph D research. It has opened up so many stories for us.

What's Coming Up?

No more talks until February but I still have to prepare the talks and that can be time consuming. Check out the Events page of my website to see the dates, places and titles of talks.

With Genie Chats next year I am doing English Genealogy in Term 1.  As I am planning to travel in May there probably won't be a set subject for Term 2 but we might do a few one off topics. 

The plan is to finish at least one of my five family history drafts by 2024. They are all so close but citations are giving me grief. Queensland State Archives have new identification numbers so everything has to be updated and sad to say, some of my orginal citations are not complete.

Stay safe and well and enjoy whatever spare time the Christmas season has for you. 

Until next time, Shauna