Digital tools, Open Data, Rockstar Genealogists & Other News - Genealogy Notes 11-18 Oct 2017

It's been a soggy week in south east Queensland which means lots of time indoors. I've now got my family history database on the new laptop and brought all my photographs across. It would have been easier to just copy everything across but it is amazing how many programs I have that I no longer use or there are newer and better versions. I am also tidying up my file directory and deleting things that I don't need anymore. A true spring clean and of course a nice little list of things to do later. 

The professional development day of the Queensland Professional Historians Association in Brisbane was a great success and I learnt about some digital tools for organising research so that you can find it again later. Of course Evernote was one that was mentioned, Air Table and also Zotero which I had forgotten about and how you can use it with Trove. The Department of Natural Resources and Mines has a new Queensland historical map viewer coming soon which will allow us to use the historical digital maps already in open data easier. It looks fantastic and here's hoping that the testing phase is completed soon.

My talk was on social media for historians and how it can be used for finding and sharing information as well as networking. It was a long day but good catching up with some people I've known for decades - I guess that's when we realise the years are passing. The venue was the Queensland Art Gallery theatre and I really must get down to Brisbane and spend some time in the Gallery, Library and Museum as they have all changed greatly since I worked there in the 1990s.

In the small world category, one of the attendees who I have known for years, had just spent time with a friend who is my distant cousin on the Carnegie side of the family and while she was visiting, they Googled some of the family names and found my blogs.  Naturally I said please have her contact me and we can share more family stories but I was also fascinated by the personal recollections she had of Toorbul. When you start to share your family stories online you really do start to connect up with others.

John and Helen Carnegie's grave
at Toorbul (my GGG grandparents)

Going to U3A twice a week for advanced family history and local Bribie history takes up time but it is also another opportunity to share information and learn from others. My talk on the Carnegies of Pumicestone Passage went well at the Bribie Island Historical Society Meeting and everyone was amazed at how much additional information I had found over the last three years. How I solved the brick wall with so many people using aliases left some just shaking their heads but it was something that took me years to solve and only 45 minutes to explain. It's always easier in hindsight.

I have just accepted my first talk for 2018 with Caloundra Family History Research, apart from my two talks at the Bridging the Past & Future Congress in Sydney in March. Speaking of talks, John D Reid (Canada's Anglo Celtic Connections) is again hosting his annual Rockstar Genealogist survey and voting is now open. I'm honoured to be nominated and there is a great line up of Australasian genealogists as well as some of the overseas genealogists who have visited our shores in the last few years. Check out their websites/blogs and be prepared to learn lots.

Talk of Christmas parties seems to be everywhere at the moment but I also like this time of year as I don't have any talks, so no travel and just time to catch up on projects and do some writing. Of course it helps that it is raining so no garden, pool or walks along the beach to distract me. The bookshelves need a tidy up with all my new books (some still to be read) plus print copies of journals and magazines.

We have been here 5 years in January so that means quite a few boxes have magically appeared in the study cupboards. The only time I find it easy to weed my magazines and journals is when I am moving house and then it's a necessity. Now that I am staying put, I'm hoarding again. It might be time to bundle some of them up and take them along to those Christmas parties!

I'm looking forward to a nice quiet week of research and writing and perhaps weeding those magazines. Have a great genealogy week and until next time, happy searching.

Brickwalls, Old Dog, New Tricks - Genealogy Notes 8-14 Jun 2015

Two presentations last week - my own at the Deception Bay library which went well with an enthusiastic crowd and lots of questions. If only I had a dollar for everyone who has chatted to me about their brick wall! The presentation is on my website Resources page, scroll down to Presentations.

The other talk was also part of the Moreton Bay Region Libraries family and local history program. They had Helen Smith talking at the Bribie Island Library so I didn't have far to travel to hear one of my favourite Queensland speakers. Helen's talk was on Death Certificates and Archaic Medical Terms and I had heard an earlier version of this talk.

Helen at Bribie Island Library

The second part of her talk was completely new to me and I would have loved to hear a whole hour on it. Basically Helen looked at occupational diseases and how some jobs ended up disfiguring or killing the people who did them. With lots of miners in the family, I was already aware of miner's phthisis but in the days of no health and safety, a lot of working people's health was at risk of accidents and diseases.  Looking forward to hearing more about this from Helen and there may even be a book on the way.

The first part of the talk was on the basics - why get death certificates, where from and what's on them and so on. Essential to know if you are starting out but a bit boring if you have been around a while like me. BUT even if you are an old hand you should never tune out as you just might miss something totally relevant. Helen said not one but two things that made me sit up and start thinking during this part of her talk.

Most of my brick walls have tumbled over the last few years with new indexes, digitised resources and mega databases but I still have one that has eluded me since I first hit it in 1977. For nearly 40 years I have been trying to find the death of James Henry Trevaskis in Copperfield Queensland between Oct 1868 and Nov 1873 when his wife Dorcas remarried. So what did Helen say that might be relevant for my brick wall?

Helen mentioned how many unknown deaths there were - people who die and are not identified or their remains are found until many years later. Is my James Henry an unknown? I suspect even if he was it might be a bit hard to prove but I will be looking into all unknown male deaths in my time frame to see if any fit or should be looked into more.

The second thing was similar in that if there is no body there is no death certificate. So if James disappeared his wife would have had to wait seven years to declare him dead. But she remarried five years after the last known sighting of James Henry which tends to suggest that she knew he was dead. But why no death certificate? Helen's talk has motivated me to look at everything again and it has been a while since I looked in Trove for him. Wish me luck!

The other big time occupier this week was adding events to the National Family History Month web calendar - August is not that far off now. If family history and genealogy societies want to receive a bonus sponsors prize this year their events must be in the calendar before 30 June. For all those excited individuals out there, the individuals prize giveaway does not start until 1 August so no early birds please! See the NFHM website for details of sponsors, prizes and terms and conditions.

The NFHM launch in Adelaide is coming together and thanks to South Australian friends for helping me put together a guest list. Invitations are going out this week and I need to work on my speech notes and background launch slide. I have to get as much done as I can before I leave on holidays as I arrive back just a few days before the launch and will be fighting jet lag and a back log of everything before I jump on a plane and head to Adelaide.

After the launch I am staying on for the weekend in Adelaide so that I can participate in the Unlock the Past Power Up Your Local and Family History Research all day seminar which looks at war, sport, photographs and diaries and letters. I am doing three talks, Graham Jaunay is doing one and so is Susan Marsden, President of the History Council of South Australia. Should be a great day and an excellent way to kick off National Family History Month in Adelaide.

The next week should see me finish writing the Occupations course for the Australian certificate run by the National Institute of Genealogical Studies.  This has been a lot of work mainly because there are so many resources but I have also learnt a lot too. I think future students will find it interesting.

This weekend I am cleaning out the pantry cupboard (although a lot of the time I seem to have been procrastinating or wondering where something came from). It is always a mystery how something neat, tidy and organised always seems to end up so messed up. When I shop I put all the tins in one place, cereals in another, sauces in their spot, spices together, I don't hide anything. But I am not the only one that lives here. The small tins of dog food were a surprise, I thought at first glance they were sardines but no, apparently it is good fishing bait. Why in our food cupboard?? Then there are the chocolates, biscuits, jams, empty jars, plastic containers all tucked away and forgotten about. At least now the other half has some supplies for the next fishing trip and I have a neat and tidy pantry again.

Until next week happy researching.

Genealogy Notes 12-16 Jun 2014 Canberra & NFHM news

Well it has been a very busy few days and considerably cooler than what I am used to. The trek to Canberra involved a bus ride to the Brisbane airport, small plane to Canberra (didn't realise they still used propeller planes) then a taxi to the Forrest Hotel and Apartments which is where I stay as it is a nice, if chilly walk to the National Archives of Australia where my meeting was. Because of the time it takes me to travel to Canberra I always come in the day before.

This usually gives me time for a coffee and chat with the President of AFFHO who are the organisation behind National Family History Month. It is a chance for me to report on how it is going and to get support back from the AFFHO members. So after a spirited discussion we both went away with a 'to do' list for this year's launch and to make sure every AFFHO member across Australia remembers to put their events up in the NFHM web calendar. My Facebook NFHM campaign has been going well and the number of Likes is steadily creeping towards 1000 (865 at the time I typed this). I am reasonably confident this target will be reached.

Dinner was with an old HAGSOC friend from my time living in Canberra and again the conversation was all about genealogy, societies and NFHM. Again I came away with some good ideas for this and future years. It was also the most divine pork belly on Asian vegetable broth and as it was raining we had dined at the Sherwood Restaurant at the Forrest Hotel. It took me a little while to realise why they called the restaurant that but I put that down to the cold!

Next morning it was even colder as I did the 20 minute stroll to the National Archives of Australia for the advisory committee meeting for World War One. This is always a good opportunity for me to catch up with some of old colleagues as I worked at NAA at the beginning of this century for a few years. The new Discovering ANZACs website is at the testing stage and should be live before August so stay tuned for more news. It will be replacing the old Mapping Our ANZACs website plus there are a lot of new and exciting features.

As National Family History Month is being launched in Canberra at the National Archives it was also an opportunity to discuss the arrangements in person which is always much nicer than just over the phone or by email. Everything looks on track so I am quite happy with all the organising side of NFHM but I will make a call to all those genealogy and family history societies, libraries and archives who have not yet put their events into the web calendar, please do so that people can start planning what they want to attend and when.

Whenever visiting the NAA I take the opportunity to go to their latest exhibition which is A Place to Call Home, about post war migrants and their experiences in Australia. While living in Victoria we had visited Bonegilla so I found the photos in this exhibition fascinating and could appreciate the comments of the migrants featured in the exhibition. The exhibition is also linked to the NAA website Destination Australia.

For some reason I could not get a cheap flight home so I stayed another night and caught up with the current president of HAGSOC for another genealogy and travel chat over dinner at Ginseng in Manuka. The Forrest Hotel is within easy walking distance of Manuka and I have been slowly working my way around all the fantastic restaurants there. There is also a great little bookshop there and as I walked through the door, there was Carole Baxter's new book up on a stand taking pride of place on the shelf. Great to see her book so actively promoted.

Then next day it was the long trek home again. Last Diary was all about my exciting discovery on my Gunderson line so I was interested to see if there had been any feedback. My cousin had been so excited he contacted the American researcher for me and this person was initially skeptical as they were not aware of the illegitimate son which was what I had thought. He tried to prove my conclusion but was unable to find the entry in the online digitised parish registers. I had bought the certificate back in 1983 so I knew the entry was there so a quick scan, an email and when he rechecked using the references in the certificate he found the entry.

The question still in his mind is - was there more than one Gunder Jorgenson from Toe in Seljord? I did look at this back in the 80s and could not find anyone else but that was all before computers, indexing and digitisation. I still think it is right but another search now won't go astray.

Everything else is piling up around me as NFHM starts to take over my life but I am going to the Caloundra Family History Research Group on Thursday for a presentation. I am looking forward to this as they are a really friendly group. The following week should be a little quieter. Happy researching till next time.

Genealogy Notes 8-11 Jun 2014 Serendipity and Brick Wall Crumbles

This Diary post is a little early as I am off to Canberra tomorrow for a meeting at the National Archives of Australia and some catch up chats with some National Family History Month friends as the August launch of NFHM will be in Canberra this year. So I have been trying to catch up with a few things before I leave.

Week 18 of my 52 Weeks of Genealogical Records in 2014 is all about almanacs as a source for tracing people. The last few weeks I have been using examples from my Gunderson family, my father's family who were Norwegian. While searching in Pugh's Almanacs (online and free at Text Queensland along with a whole lot of other Queensland resources) I found a brief reference to the death of my original Norwegian immigrant Anders (Andrew) Gundersen (Gunderson). He was accidentally killed in a dray accident and it was interesting to find him listed in the calendar of events for the year. Read more about my almanacs post here.

Whenever I think about Anders, I also think about his father who emigrated to America in 1850 with his wife and family. My Anders was an illegitimate son who stayed in Norway with his mother before emigrating to Queensland in 1873 with his own wife and two young sons. Anders' father was Gunnar Jorensen and anyone with Scandinavian ancestry will know it can be a nightmare trying to trace them with the various spelling variations, patronymics, anglicisation of given names and surnames and so on.

I first started researching the family in 1977 and back then I was lucky enough to have a genealogy pen friend in Norway who found the Jorensen family in a 'bygdebok', essentially a genealogy of families from a particular area. It took my family back to 1688 in a single leap. Since then Norwegian records have been digitised and are online free so I have been able to look at the original parish records too.

My next piece of serendipity occurred in the 80s when I decided to try and trace them in America. I picked a professional researcher and sent him the details. As luck would have it, his ancestors went to America on the same ship as mine so he answered my query almost instantly. Remember this was all mostly before the advent of computers and big databases.

My next break came when I decided to put an enquiry on a Norwegian genealogy forum and someone saw it and knew someone who was researching the same family. Again I was given a lot of information in a short space of time but the person was researching Gunnar's wife's family, not his side. So I still did not know what had happened to him.

As US census came online I gradually found references to the family over the decades with the spelling of the names varying quite widely each census. Fortunately they didn't move around much. But I still had not found Gunnar's death and I have not looked in years. So having just written about his illegitmate son again, I woke up this morning determined to find him. I use Ancestry.com.au to search the US census so I rechecked that and again proved he probably died sometime in the 1870s.

I was using all kinds of spelling variations and was a bit amazed when a couple of public trees showed my Gunnar Jorensen as Gunder Jorgenson. Wife's name and children's names all matched up so I knew I was looking at the right family. Even more amazing they had an image of my GGG grandfather - it is not a good image but given that I don't have one of his son Anders I am so happy to have seen even a poor image. It is from a book so perhaps I can get an even better photo. As well as that the person had put up an image of Gunnar's headstone in the cemetery where he is buried.

One of Gunnar's sons fought on the Union side during the American Civil War and died aged 26 years. I look forward to doing some more research on this as the War has always interested me. It is also probably why my Irish ancestors came to Queensland in the early 1860s instead of going to the US.

I haven't emailed the people with the public tree yet as after all I am descended from the illegitimate son and they may not even know about him. But when I get back from Canberra and am less excited, I will certainly be contacting them to see if there are any more photos and information and do they want to know about their Queensland cousins!

This would have to be the most exciting thing that has happened in my own family history in quite a while. I know that there can be a lot of criticism of public trees as sometimes people don't check their information or simply copy from others but without Ancestry.com.au there is no way that I would have made this connection and done it so easily this morning. We just need to remember that these big databases are tools that help us to do our research, they don't replace the need to still research in original documents.

Well none of my other news can top that and I have to finish packing for Canberra and my early start in the morning. This just proves that if you wait long enough that brick wall might just crumble, mine only took 37 years on and off! Happy researching.

Genealogy notes 9-15 May 2014 - genealogy in Adelaide, South Australia

Now back home on Bribie Island after a great few days in Adelaide. It was good to see the families and to watch the grandkids play netball and soccer and to have dinner with them. We even caught up with Max's cousin and some friends too. Just wished they all lived a bit closer to each other, you don't realise how big Adelaide is until you start to travel around it!

But I also managed to fit in the genealogy aspects of the trip. On Saturday afternoon I attended the last quarter of the Unlock the Past researching and writing history seminar with Carol Baxter, the History Detective. It was also good to see Brisbane friend Helen Smith also there and her blog on the seminar is a must read - see here. Alona from Gould Genealogy & History was there selling Unlock the Past publications and I picked up copies of the two latest guides - Chris Paton's British and Irish Newspapers and a second edition of John Donaldson's So You Are Totally New to Family Tree Maker. I must say that all the UTP research guides spread out on the sales table looks impressive, it doesn't seem that long ago that they were publishing the first guide, my What Was the Voyage Really Like?.

I listened to the session from Genealogy SA on what they can offer researchers and I was so impressed I joined up but more about that later! Then it was my talk on Newspapers: Finding Online Family & Local History News and as usual I have put the slides on the Resources page of my website - scroll down to Presentations. I do this so that people don't have to madly write while I am speaking, they can go home and go through it all again at leisure and I suspect after nearly two days of seminars, they were fast approaching brain overload.

I have attended one of Carol Baxter's writing seminars before but I still learnt some tips from her two last sessions on Sensory Writing (how to make it all more interesting using our five senses) and Publishing.(geared more for professional publishing which most attendees won't use but I did find the self publishing tips helpful). For information on the other sessions read Helen's blog - link above.

It was really good to see Genealogy SA there as well as the State Library of South Australia with lots of leaflets, guides and two staff to answer questions. A personal presence is always the best way I think to give people an idea of what they can get when they visit - it can be quite intimidating walking into somewhere like the State Library and not knowing where to go or even if you can ask questions. State Records SA and National Archives of Australia Adelaide Office were there on Friday and had left their information leaflets for any Saturday attendees like me.

We managed to visit all the cemeteries on my list and find the graves we were looking for. So much easier now with the cemetery data and maps all online. I printed everything before we left so we just parked near the relevant sections and followed the maps (although it does help if you orientate the map the right way to start). We took photos of all the graves and headstones although there was no headstone or plaque on Max's grandmother's grave which seemed a bit sad as it was surrounded by some impressive headstones.

From there we went to Genealogy SA's reading room where I joined up, they have some good services for interstate members and I like their online members area. I am now a member of GSV, GSQ, QFHS, SAG and Genealogy SA which almost takes me back to the late 1970s when I was a member of everything as that was the only way to find anything out. Although these days we have Google and the internet but that does not quite match some of the services these societies are now offering online to members.(I just have to give up more lattes (or bottles of wine) to pay for the subscriptions!

As I had done my homework before the visit, I was armed with a list of things I wanted to do in a very short space of time. Thanks to the friendly volunteers I managed to achieve most of it. My most urgent items were some death and marriage certificates and it is really good to see these without having to pay for a certificate. The Society has the district copies which people can use but printing is not allowed so it was a quick transcript. For those who can't visit in person the Society offers a transcription service which is also a lot cheaper than an official certificate.

One of the marriage certificates (a son from the first marriage) gave me a light bulb moment on a direct line. I have been trying to find where a Palmer family fits into the Spencer family and I think this certificate is the key to unlocking that mystery. I need to do a little more research on what I found at the weekend but it may be mystery solved! Interestingly when we caught up with friend after leaving Genealogy SA one of them said he was having trouble with his main family line. He even thought he might be tracing the wrong line so my first question to anyone with a brick wall or problem is 'have you got all the certificates' step by step going backwards. In this case he had only been buying the birth certificates so I'm looking forward to an update when he gets some marriage and death certificates which should solve the confusion.

On the Monday we treated ourselves to a wine tour of the Barossa Valley with Taste the Barossa. They pick you up from your accommodation and then drive you to the four wineries and some scenic sites such as the Whispering Wall and Mengler's Hill Lookout. We had a delicious ploughman's platter style lunch at Peter Lehmann's winery and I thoroughly enjoyed the trip as it is such an historic area dating back to the 1840s. Some of the little villages/towns still look the same and there are lots of ruins scattered around as well.

So a great research and family weekend and I have been busy adding all my new data into my software and working out what needs to be done next. As much as I like just doing my own research, reality steps in and I now have to finalise my two new talks for the Genealogical Society of Queensland seminar on 25 May - looking at the AJCP and court of petty session records. Plus I have articles due for Inside History Magazine and Irish Lives Remembered. My personal genealogy blog challenge 52 Weeks of Genealogical Records in 2014 has suffered with all the travels but that will be back next week.

I hope everyone else has had a successful genealogy week. It is such a good feeling when things start to fall into place. So don't give up, and happy ancestor hunting this week!

Genealogy Notes 17-23 April 2012 - Online or Offline

When you are travelling it's easy to lose track of the days and fall behind if you don't log on everyday. In my last Diary entry I was excited about going to the Society of Australian Genealogists' (SAG) library in Sydney and I did have a great day. What wasn't so much fun was the 'rain episode' Sydney had while I was there and I managed to get quite a bit damp as I walked to SAG and other places around the CBD over those few days.

I found the SAG library fascinating and managed to spend all day there, stopping for some lunch and a coffee with Heather. Like most older libraries SAG still has card indexes that have not yet been keyed into a database (although there are ongoing projects but it takes time and volunteers) so these indexes were a priority for me to check and I found some interesting references. I can't wait until they are all keyword searchable online as cards can only be filed in one place or only under a person's name and not by place or other identifier.

My next activity was to have a look at some of their books which I had previously looked up in the SAG online catalogue and again I made some interesting finds. You can save a lot of time by doing your catalogue searches at home before visiting a library, certainly beats the 'old days'. However for most of the morning I was the only one down that end of the room, everyone else was up the other end on the computers. Not everything is online but perhaps they had already looked at all the non online materials?

After lunch I could stand it no longer and I went down and took up a terminal, only to be surprised that there were over 1100 items to choose from! My purpose was to look at SAG's Australian Genealogical Computer Index (AGCI) four CD ROM's which have a wide variety of material on them but I could see others using FindMyPast, Ancestry, Origins and the older gentleman next to me was even using TROVE - I hadn't thought about those members who might not have a computer at home to do free web searches let alone access all the different subscription databases and material on CD ROMs. Fifteen minutes before closing I made a terrific find but of course there was no time to follow it through so I will need to access the AGCI CDs again either at the Genealogical Society of Victoria (GSV) or perhaps even the State Library of Victoria.

SAG's volunteers on duty were very helpful and as a new (rejoined) member they kept asking me if I was ok or if I needed any help which was great. It always mystifies me that more people don't join their local society as you can learn so much from the library volunteers not to mention all the great resources you can access in the society library. I'm currently a member of three societies, SAG, GSV and the Queensland Family History Society (QFHS) which somewhat reflects my own nomadic lifestyle but also that of my ancestors.

The following day there was even more rain so I bunkered down in the hotel room and consolidated my notes and did some online searching of digitised newspapers on TROVE. It's very easy to lose a few hours of time that way and even when I poked my head outside for lunch and a bit of a walk, my umbrella was not up to the winds whipping down Oxford Street!

Thursday was my flight home to Melbourne and Friday was a catch up with the housework, shopping and washing and all the mail, including a large envelope from London. Rosemary Morgan of London Roots Research has been doing some research for me and she found the death of someone whose death had been eluding me. His wife was called a widow in the 1851 census but not the 1841 census so I had assumed (that often fatal word) that he had died between 1841 and 1851 but without finding him. Rosemary took it back to the birth of his last child and it turned out he died in 1832! Some times it pays to get professional assistance with brickwalls, especially when you have looked at everything you can think off. Someone else's view and approach may be quite different from our own.

The weekend was wet here in Melbourne so I tackled some more decluttering and identifying items for our garage sale at the end of May. We have so much 'stuff' piled up everywhere it will be good to see it go, either at the garage sale or to a charity afterwards. We've also given away a lot to our children, friends and neighbours and also to some charities. Yet there still seems like a lot of 'stuff' left.Wherever we end up moving to, we have to make certain that we don't end up rebuying all this 'stuff'!

Over the last week I've been in discussion with a couple of people about doing talks later in the year so once details are finalised I'll be able to put those up on my Events calendar. I'm also putting some finishing touches to some new research guides for Unlock the Past - I have a tendency to want to include everything but that's not always possible so completing a guide is always hard for me. My ANZAC Day blog this year will be on my mother's eldest brother who was a Rat of Tobruk and he also served in New Guinea as well as the Middle East. Time to get back to work!

Genealogy notes 15-18 September 2011 Red Herrings & Brickwalls

I have continued my tidy up of the study and it is so easy to get distracted. I am finding as I look through my family history files and research folders, I want to revisit the research as there is so much more now that is easily accessible online. TROVE is a fantastic resource for finding information on families in Australian newspapers. Of course once you are on TROVE it is not so easy to get off - it's so addictive and because you are turning up little nuggets on the family, why stop?

I've also gone through my Problems folder - questions I couldn't answer, families I couldn't find and so on. I dragged out my Elizabeth Judge question - I had a birth certificate in 1857, a marriage certificate in 1878 but couldn't find her on either the 1861 or 1871 census. I had looked many times, originally on microfilm but more recently in both Ancestry and FindMyPast.

Yesterday was the day I was going to solve it once and for all and I spent the better part of the day just doing that. I also proved my research of 34 years totally wrong and now I have to go back and clean everything up. Not only in my Legacy Family Tree database but also my online databases in Genes Reunited, Ancestry and My Heritage. It is going to take some time but at least now I know the real story. Intrigued - it's all in my Online Research, New Resources, Fresh Eyes.

The other thing I did yesterday was to get back into the 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History blogging series and Week 37 was Earliest Memories. I looked back on my first day of school and if you want to see me in my Grade One uniform click here. I find photographs terrific for helping to retrieve long forgotten memories.

As much as I would like to just sit here gazing outside and watching the birds, I have a family tree to clean up and as my other half points out, the house also needs a bit of a tidy up! He's gone off on his motorbike, so I can't ask him what housework needs doing - it all looks fine to me. So perhaps back to TROVE?

Genealogy notes 10-13 August 2011 Toowoomba seminar

When I started this blog back in July, I should have probably called it a travel and genealogy diary as I seem to have done nothing but travel since then. It's been hectic over the last few days with 10-11 August spent up at Coolum Beach on the Sunshine Coast catching up with friends. The weather has been absolutely wonderful, blue skies and very warm for winter and it is easy to see why Queensland is the Sunshine State.

Perhaps the highlight was the sunset cruise on the Noosa River on board the Noosa Queen where they take you up river to the mouth of Lake Cooroibah and you arrive just as the sun sets in a fiery red ball on the other side of the lake. A must see event and our photos don't do it justice, although the one on their website is pretty close to what we saw. The bird life is also amazing and it is all so quiet with just a few fishermen here and there and a houseboat or two. You arrive back at Noosa Marina just in time to see thousands and thousands of flying foxes (bats) fly out of the trees and head inland for a night of feasting. Another amazing sight and there was almost a full moon which added a touch of spookiness.

After our relaxing two days at Coolum we had to head over to Toowoomba and rather than take the highways, we went via Kilcoy, Esk and Crow's Nest, all haunts of mine during the 70s. It was nice to see that not a lot of change has occurred and driving past Ravensbourne National Park brought back many memories of a time before family history.

Toowoomba was still largely as I remember it, Picnic Point is still there and the main streets in the CBD are all the same but some of the roundabouts and one way streets tricked us up a bit. Roadworks and detours were another hazard. On the Friday night we did something I haven't done in over 30 years - we went to the incredible seafood buffet at Weis Restaurant at the Top of the Range.

Walking inside was a real trip back in time and it is better than ever I think. Our table was just near the fire in one of the main dining rooms and it was only a short walk to the next room where the buffet was set up. Nothing frozen there and everything we tried was delicious and the dessert table has to be seen to be believed. It is also as popular as ever as we were at the early sitting and most tables were occupied. I want to go back again!!

Saturday was the reason we were in Toowoomba in the first place. I was giving three talks and John Graham from the Ryerson Index was giving two talks in an all day family history seminar organised by the Toowoomba City Council Library. It attracted 76 people which is about the limit of the room but people didn't seem to mind the closeness. It was good to see the folks from the Toowoomba & Darling Downs Family History Society there and I hope they picked up a few new members.

My talks were all well received ( a beginner's talk, genealogy on the cheap and a brick walls talk) and I have put copies of the slides on the Resources page of my website as attendees were writing notes down furiously and finding it hard to keep up with all the new ideas and suggestions. I had heard John's basic talks before (one on the Ryerson index and the other on the value of country newspapers) but I am not sure if he has added new information or I just didn't take it in the first time. You can now link from the Ryerson website to digitised newspapers by going to the Request a Lookup link. Fantastic.

Copies of my books all sold well and we soon sold out as we could only carry so many up from Melbourne. They are available online from Gould Genealogy, look under the link for Unlock the Past publications. It's odd but they don't have an author search facility. I think the Library organisers were all pleased with the day and I suspect there will be many attendees online today trying out the new sites.

Three museums also worth a visit in Toowoomba are the Cobb & Co Museum, the Highfields Pioneer Village and the Southern Cross Museum which is part of your ticket to the Village. Just leave plenty of time to see everything.

On the way back to Brisbane we stopped at the Big Orange (another one of my favourite places from the past) and brought some really fresh and cheap fruit and vegetables). We are at Mum's for another week so have lots of time to eat everything we bought, although we may have been a bit over enthusiastic.

After a very big day I was in bed by 8.30pm on a Saturday night! There's a big genealogy week coming up so stay tuned.

Genealogy notes 18 July 2011 Brick wall research

Thank goodness young ones like afternoon naps - so hard to do anything on a laptop when you are playing games, chasing rabbits round the yard or out shopping! Still it is an experience you wouldn't trade for anything.

In my down time I continued having a look at our friend's brick wall that I wrote about the other day. I wasn't sure what the New Zealand connection was but decided to try Papers Past as both the married name and the maiden name are relatively uncommon. Interestingly I picked up some references to her athletic achievements that were reprinted from Sydney papers. The surprise was one of the articles talking about her fiancée and how they were going to be married the following year. The article was from 1919 but she obviously didn't end up marrying him. I wonder why not? Instead she married a man 13 years older than her in 1923, the same year she had their only child.

I then tried TROVE for Australian newspapers but the only additional information came from a funeral notice for her brother who died in 1949 - she is listed as one of the mourners in the family notice. This is long after she is thought to have died - did her brothers and sisters just list her because they weren't sure where she was or did they know she was still alive but not with her husband and child?

I also had some success in both Ancestry and FindMyPast in that I found the young family leaving Australia in 1924 for London (her husband was born in Devon) and then I found them coming back in 1927 - without these indexes and digitised images online it wouldn't be possible to do searches like this. So now I know that they were still together in 1927 and in Australia.

I tried to find out a bit more about the husband and noted that he had enlisted for war service in 1939 although he was 53 and from the immigration records I knew he had been in the British Navy possibly during WWI but that needs more looking into. The National Archives of Australia has digitised the series Service Cards for Petty Officers and Men 1911-1970 and I was able to look at the record myself. He listed as his next of kin his wife and an address for her as well as another woman (a friend) and address for her. Did he know where his wife was or was that just a last known address for her? Was there no divorce? Lots of questions which I will have to talk over with our friends when we get back to Melbourne.

With brick walls it really is a matter of just trying to fill in the missing bits and pieces of information. I find that doing timelines for people can be useful as it readily shows all the available facts not only about the person you are looking for but also those around them. Sometimes if you investigate other family members you will find that elusive bit of information on the one you really seek.

Tomorrow is a kindy day so hoping for a bit more genealogy time but then it would also be good to get out and see some of Adelaide as well. It's hard being a tourist too, so many things I want to do and see!

Genealogy notes 14 July 2011

Yesterday was a strange sort of day, did a bit of searching on our friend's brick wall that I mentioned last time - mostly rechecking sources that they have already covered. But sometimes a second pair of eyes helps or you use a different search strategy or different spelling variations. Some of the sources I covered included:
Ancestry.com.au trying to pick up a date of death, or mention on an electoral roll
FindMyPast.com.au again looking for electoral rolls
Victorian BDM's - I always check the individual State indexes as well as the Ancestry version - with the online indexes you have to pay unless you have access to the indexes on CD
TROVE - Australian newspaper searching on both married and maiden names, of course if she entered into a de facto relationship or simply changed her name we will never find her!
PapersPast - another newspaper search but this time in New Zealand in case the earthquake story is correct
Rootsweb mailing list archives - I always like to see if anyone else has posted a 'missing person' notice and this did turn up emails from the family but with no success in finding her.

While I was finding references to the family, there was nothing pointing me to where she had gone or when she had died. I decided to park the problem and let ideas come to me. It was about then that the postman arrived bearing the 5th issue of Inside History, a relatively new Australian genealogy magazine. So I decided to break for a cup of tea but that stretched into lunch as I settled down for a good read.

After lunch it was a nice walk down to the library in the 'rare' sunshine and then packing up my talks and bits and pieces for the Unlock the Past South Australian and Victorian Border Expo 22-23 July. We are having a few days in Adelaide before heading back to Mount Gambier for the expo - it's a chance to see the family while we are relatively close or closer!

I'm finding that I'm spending even more time on emails and social media with the advent of Google+ as I get notifications on new connections, when I start looking at the genealogy stream (or other streams) I get sidetracked, much like Twitter sidetracks me with interesting new links and genealogy news. I'm starting to think it is all like television, it it's on, I watch it and don't do anything I should be doing. Might start up a time log but then I will worry about what I might be missing!