Last month was another travel month with three weeks in Bali. Lots of great food, and good books to read. But time to get serious again with my studies and family history.
Blogs
Managed another guest blog for the Genealogical Society of Queensland. This one continued on with my walking in ancestral footsteps only this time in North Queensland. Read the blog here.
Books
Mostly read books and articles relating to my Ph D thesis in Bali while I lazed around the pool.
Conferences
AFFHO's Family History Month was a great success and the opening and closing presentations are online so don't miss Andrew Redfern, Jane Smith and Anne Young's inspiring talks.
Virtual conferences are so good. No travel and no having to pay for accommodation. But you do miss the personal interaction.
In the first two weeks of September I attended the North of Ireland Family History Society summer school on DNA. The sessions are recorded and you have a month to watch them. So far have watched four and they have been brilliant as a refresher and as something new. Finding time to watch is the hard part.
On a really positive note, I won a mitochondrial full test DNA kit from Family Tree DNA which more than covered the cost of the summer school. However I did the full test back in 2021 but I can have a credit for another product but I have decided to donate the value in autosomal kits for the Islandmagee DNA project (where Dad's paternal family was from).
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| St John's Church Islandmagee Antrim May 2025 |
Also attended the Scottish Indexes conference with another great line up of speakers on various aspects of Scottish research.
Finally I virtually attended the NSW & ACT annual conference which was held down in the Illawarra. Some familiar faces in the audience and some of the speakers were really excellent on AI and DNA in particular. Again there is time to watch the sessions again over the coming month.
RootsTech 2026 - yes fast approaching on 5-7 March next year. Registration opens on 24 September 2025. Not long to go and in person and online.
Family History
Not much new research done as I am still editing the final draft of my family history on my Carnegie/Stratton line. The draft has been written over the last 20 years and I haven't included some sources so I have to go back and identify them. Plus my style of doing endnotes has changed so I have had to decide on a final style sheet and then make all the amendment. Getting there slowly as the date on the front cover indicates!
I want to finish it before the next gathering of Founding Families, the descendants of original families of the Caboolture Shire meet in October. That is organised by the Caboolture Family History Research Group which I keep saying I should join and check out their resources.
New resources
Where to start? There is so much happening everywhere. What has really blown me away is that FamilySearch now has full text searching (with AI) as a menu item under records. I particularly like looking at probate records as you get everyone mentioned in the will, not just the deceased. How incredible is that for finding lost people in our family trees.
Talks
In August I gave a talk at the Auckland, New Zealand Family History Expo (virtual) on mining the archives. Talking about some of my tips and tricks on making the most of your searches in online catalogues in Australia, New Zealand, England, Scotland, Ireland and Northern Ireland. Also had a few slides for finding European archives.
What's coming up?
Home through September so I hope to catch up with quite a few things on my to do list. I have two genealogy talks in October and a presentation at the Professional Historians Association conference in Darwin at the end of October. That should be good and I am taking the opportunity to come home via Broome, a place I have always wanted to visit.
Hard to believe that Christmas and the New Year are heading towards us at the speed of light. Enjoy your research time before that silly season arrives. Until next time Shauna
