Asylums, Societies & Land Records - Genealogy notes 9-16 May 2015

It has been a strange week as I have spent a bit of time without access to the internet which is extremely frustrating when you need to get certain things finished. Seriously thinking about my internet set up as I do need to depend on it at times and need reliability.

Max at AFAQ Cottage May 2015

On Friday we went with a group of U3A Bribie history lovers to the Amateur Fishing Association of Queensland's headquarters at Bongaree where Max's great uncle Adkins Robert Spencer was a President for over 16 years back in the 1920s and 30s. There were photos up on the wall, an honor roll with his name on it for all those years and copies of the minutes of meetings from when he was President. The cottage is basically the same as it was then except it has been raised up a floor. We find it incredibly moving to walk where our ancestors have been and to be in the same place that they spent time. A great outing.

One consequence of no internet access was that I didn't write any blogs in the last week which feels quite strange, perhaps it is like an exercise person who misses their daily run. All revved up but no place to go. Basically I focused on upcoming talks. I reviewed my talk Family Skeletons or Just Old & Sick: Looking into Asylum Records which I presented yesterday at an education seminar for the Genealogical Society of Queensland. You can see the presentation on my website Resources page, scroll down to Presentations.

It was almost a packed house and there were lots of questions and discussions over morning tea. The Society had copies of my book on asylum records for sale and it was nice to see people purchasing them. Copies of my other research guides sold too and I gave a shout out to Chris Paton's Down and Out in Scotland when someone asked about British asylums.

Presentation area GSQ Library 

It was my first visit to the GSQ's library and as always I was impressed with just how many resources are available to genealogy/family history society members. There are internet resources, microforms, old card indexes (not always in a database), books and magazines and not to mention the wonderful volunteers who give advice to people looking for information on their families.

It always amazes me when people say they don't need to join the local society as they have no Brisbane (or wherever the society is) connections. Australian society libraries have resources for all over the world but especially the UK and other Australian states and you can access Ancestry and Findmypast and perhaps other subscription sites there as part of your membership.

One of the things I keep forgetting is that many societies have resources online in members only sections of their websites. I rejoined GSQ when I came back to Queensland in 2012 and this was my first visit to the library and I have yet to visit their members only resources online. I really need to go back for a research visit as I spotted a few things I want to follow up and in the members only section one of the things I want is online - at least the index is and with the reference I can request a copy (for a fee) without making the trek down to the library.

How many people are not making the most of their Society membership? No time is one of my ongoing issues but it is also not consciously thinking of how best to use my memberships. Of course if you are not a member of a society you are totally missing out in the first place.

Perhaps the most exciting news I picked up during the week was the release of historical land information for South Australia. Historical Torrens titles and name indexes are now online and free to view and download. It is not searchable so you need to open page after page of the name index until you find the right entry. From there you get the CT reference (Certificate of Title) and then it is a simple to preview or download a copy. Have a look at the YouTube demo here or go direct to the SAILIS website to start your search. Thanks to my friends on Facebook for highlighting a great new resource.

Social media such as Twitter, Google +, Facebook and so on can show us some exciting new resources or how to use them as others pass the news along to their friends and followers. Are you missing out?

Trove have sent me a few messages telling me that articles I had flagged on Trove are now ready to see - remember if you see those 'coming soon' messages you can ask them to notify you when the article is available. I find it a handy reminder that I want to see something in particular.

This coming week I have my webinar with Society of Australian Genealogists members on Queensland resources so I am a bit worried about the dodgy internet connection at the moment. I have selected some interesting and not so well known online resources to talk about so it should be good, touch wood! Webinars are one of the members only benefits that SAG offers although you have to be quick to book as they are extremely popular.

Next weekend is a bit of a family gathering, my son's birthday and my niece is turning 21 so a catch up with Mum and my brother's family and dinner out to celebrate. As I am already in Brisbane for that I am taking the opportunity to meet up with a distant cousin who found me via one of my family blogs on the Finn family. She has my GGG grandmother's family bible which my GG grandmother brought out from Ireland with her. How exciting is that! Plus there is other information we can exchange so I am really looking forward to that.

Until next time have a great genealogy week.

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 24 Feb - 3 Mar 2014 - More talks, more blogs

Last week I was on a high because my Diary blog was listed in Randy Seaver's (Geneamusings) best of geneablogs and I am really happy to say that my SHHE Genie Rambles blog on The Future of Genealogy on my website also made his weekly list - details of Randy's weekly list here. I am also pleased because that blog article has attracted more readers than my blogs usually attract so that means it is a topic of great interest to many people. I think it is a great time to be researching family history with online resources and the ability to use social media making it easier than ever. But we should still use standard research methodology and remember that not everything is online.

I have also accepted two more talks. Due to illness of another speaker, I have been asked to do a second talk at the Inverell Family History Group seminar in April. They have asked me to do something on blogging and why you should do it or not. This is a great topic and I am looking forward to convincing them why I think it is a good thing! Unlock the Past have asked me to do a talk on newspapers and their use for family and local history research at a Research & Writing History Seminar in Adelaide in May. This is a seminar being conducted by Carol Baxter over two days with a couple of other speakers as well. Normally I would not go to Adelaide for one talk but we were planning a visit to the grand kids so it ties in nicely with that. Details of talk dates etc are on the Events page of my website.

My personal blogging challenge, 52 Weeks of Genealogical Records in 2014, is progressing and in Week 7 Local Histories I showed why it is important to check all information, even if it is published in a local history. and Week 8 was on diaries and how they can give you an image of daily life for our ancestors. I do not have any family diaries in my records, I use other peoples diaries so if you have not considered the idea before, have a look at Week 8 Diaries.

My newspapers talk at Bribie Island Library went well and tomorrow it is Narangba Library on Google Tools for Genealogy. Moreton Bay Region Libraries run a fantastic program of talks for genealogists and family historians in the shire. We went to the exhibition launch for Blood Brothers: an ANZAC Genesis at the Pine Rivers Heritage Museum and we will have to visit again as it is quite a substantial place (part of Old Petrie Town) with lots of buildings to see.

The Queensland BDMs have been adding new products over the last few months including the Australian Imperial Force and WW2 images. If you have not had a look for a while, it might be worthwhile to see what the site looks like now. See here for their family history information. They are also conducting a survey to see how they can further improve their services. It is refreshing to see that they actively seek feedback and perhaps more importantly, actually then make changes based on that feedback. If you would like to do the survey, click here.

We have agreed to host a meeting of the Professional Historian's Association (Queensland) (PHAQ) at our place in just over two weeks time. As well as providing lunch we are also giving them a tour around the historic places on Bribie Island before taking them to the Bribie Island Seaside Museum for a talk and tour of the museum. It is a good way for us to become familiar with the Island's history and I am putting together a leaflet in case anyone asks us to do the same again. The Bribie Island Historical Society (BIHS) do have a leaflet but we do not have time to do all of those things plus there are some sites that I want to take PHAQ to that are not on the BIHS leaflet.

My talk at the BIHS is now only a week away so I have visited their room at the local library and checked the database for what they have on my Carnegie and Davis families. I have lots more information so I think that the members will be interested in my talk on the Carnegie family plus I mention the oyster industry and other families in the Toorbul area. It is the first time that I have done a talk based solely on my own family history so I am a bit nervous and hope I don't put too many people to sleep on the night!

This week copies of my two new publications arrived - Tracing Mining Ancestors: a brief guide to resources in Australia and New Zealand and My Ancestor was in an Asylum: brief guide to asylum records in Australia and New Zealand. Both are published by Unlock the Past and are available from Gould Genealogy & History or I have them for sale at my various talks.

With all the talks I have not had too much time for my own research but I do try to do examples from my own research in the talks so I guess that is one way to extend my knowledge of the family a little more. Happy researching until next time.

Genealogy Notes 11-16 Feb 2014 - last genea cruising days

The genealogy cruise is over and we traveled home safely only for me to have a fall in the dining room. I have spectacular bruises and a few sore spots but nothing broken. However it has meant I am a bit tardy finishing up my cruising reports.

I missed reporting on Maria Northcote's (from Genies Downunder) talk on Using Free Podcasts on Day 4. This was an interesting session but due to a massive failure on Royal Caribbean's staff no one came down to open up the theatre and turn the equipment on. Maria had to give her talk in the dark with the help of a torch and we had to try and view her laptop screen instead of the theatre screen. I would have liked this presentation repeated at another time as it was really dependent on the equipment.

Our bus trip to Port Arthur penal establishment was good and there has been a lot of restoration and interpretation work done since I was last there in the late 1970s. We did not really have enough time to see everything although we raced around the various buildings as quickly as we could. There was a Rootstech presentation after dinner but I was really too tired to attend.

Day 8 was the last day at sea and it was another full program of talks. I went to Jan Gow's talk on how she uses Treepad to organise all her research. Next was Thomas MacEntee explaining Wolfram/Alpha for genealogy which was interesting although US centric at the moment. I need to have a play and see what Australian data is in there.

I skipped out then to attend the Captain's Corner which is where you get to meet the Captain and senior officers and find out interesting things about the ship. For example, it is 42,000 tons larger than the US Navy's largest aircraft carrier and it's ice skating rink doubles as a television studio. The ship weighs more than 70,000 cars or 30,000 elephants and if it were standing upright on it's bow, it would be slightly taller than the Eiffel Tower. For foodies, 105,000 meals are prepared each week (that's a lot of dishes) and 28,000 eggs are used, 8,000 gallons of ice cream, 18,000 slices of pizza, 1400 lbs of lobster, 20,000 lbs of beef, 600 lbs of berries, 1500 gallons of milk and so on are consumed each voyage. All a bit hard to comprehend because when you are on board you actually forget you are on a ship (unless you look outside)!

This session was followed by a history of the Royal Caribbean line and it was an interesting look at the development of cruise ships and trends on cruise ships over the years. We had to miss the end as the group photo was being taken. Due to the size of our group, we ended up having it taken on the Promenade Deck (or the main street) with the photographer looking down at us.

After lunch I listened to Kerry Farmer's talk on DNA and then it was my last talk for the cruise - Lost in Asylums: Missing Ancestors which is the subject of my new research guide My Ancestor was in an Asylum: Brief Guide to Asylum Records in Australia and New Zealand. Available from Gould Genealogy & History along with all my other research guides.

As a cheer up for being sick, Max booked me into a wine tasting and it was a nice way to finish up the day and the cruise. After dinner everyone went to Cleopatra's Needle for the prize draws and Chris Paton's final talk on British Civilian POW's in the First World War. Then there were speaker photographs and final farewells with everyone. The nine days went so fast.

There were other Geneabloggers on the cruise and here is a list that will give you lots of good reading.
Jill Ball – http://geniaus.blogspot.com.au/
Pauleen Cass – http://cassmob.wordpress.com/
Maggie Clarke – http://picturethisscrapbooking.wordpress.com/
Kerry Farmer – http://famresearch.wordpress.com/
Kirsty Gray – http://family-wise.co.uk/blog/
Victoria Green – http://campaspegenealogy.blogspot.com.au/
Lee-Ann Hamilton – http://xmastree2.blogspot.com.au/
Shauna Hicks – http://www.shaunahicks.com.au/category/blog/
Tiggy Johnson – http://www.tiggyjohnson.com/
Noeline Kyle – http://familyhistorywrite.blogspot.com.au/
Thomas MacEntee – http://geneabloggers.com/
Maria Northcote – http://geniesdownunder.blogspot.com.au/
Chris Paton – http://britishgenes.blogspot.com.au/
Helen Smith – http://helenvsmithresearch.blogspot.com.au/
Alona Tester – http://www.lonetester.com/
Maureen Trotter – http://www.exploringfamily.com/
Sharn White – http://sharnsgenealogyhints.blogspot.com.au/
Jackie van Bergen – http://jackievanbergen.blogspot.com/

My suitcase handle was broken somehow so that made walking to the train station after disembarking a little more tricky but getting to Sydney airport by train is so easy. Then it was a bit of a wait for our flight back to Brisbane and then we take the Bribie airport service to get home.

I will be doing an overall review of the cruise which will appear on my SHHE Genie Rambles blog (soonish) and I will also be doing a report on the future of genealogy panel session. There are lots of things to catch up on (both genealogy and around the house and gardens) but my immediate priority are my talks for Moreton Bay Region throughout February. Full details on the Events page of my website. So until next time, happy researching.