Geneatripping & NFHM 2015 - Genealogy notes 1-7 Jun 2015

Most weeks I wonder how quickly the week has gone and then some times I ponder where the years have gone. This Diary is celebrating its 4th birthday on 1 July and the original reason it started was to simply demonstrate how quickly you can set up a blog using Google Blogger. From memory it did take a little more than the 5 minutes I told the audience but since then I have seen many people set up their own blogs and write their family stories and have success in reaching long lost cousins. It really is worth the effort.

While this Diary's content has changed a bit now that we have settled and not wandering around the place so much, it has fallen into a weekly blog more by default than any design.So I am pondering some changes as we approach Diary's 5th year!


Having just said that I am not moving around that much, for the next four months I am actually on the move. My long awaited holiday in Europe is fast approaching and I will be joining other geneafriends on the 8th Unlock the Past genealogy cruise to the Baltic countries.  It is 15 years since I last went to the UK and Europe so I am really looking forward to this holiday. A few days in London and surrounds prior to the cruise will help with the jet lag. Look forward to lots of geneablogging coming from that trip.

On my return, before I even get over my jetlag, I am back on a plane to Adelaide for the launch of NFHM 2015. As voluntary coordinator of National Family History Month I have been moving the launch around Australia so that we can raise the profile of NFHM which is an Australasian Federation of Family History Organisations (AFFHO) initiative. I'm hoping to attend a genealogy event or two in Adelaide while I am there.

Just a quick reminder that genealogy and family history societies must have their events up in the NFHM web calendar before 30 June if they want to receive a bonus prize. Full details on the NFHM website.

After the launch weekend it is back home. Moreton Bay Region libraries have asked me to do 10 talks at their various libraries during NFHM. They are fantastic supporters of NFHM and always have a great genealogy program throughout the year. So happy to be living in an area where the local library is interested in local and family history. Details of the August talks are on the Events page of my website.

The end of NFHM is being celebrated at a Genealogical Society of Queensland seminar so that is a relatively quick trip to Brisbane. The NFHM prizes for societies and individuals will be drawn at the event and I thank GSQ for hosting the prize draw this year.

Then I am off to Port Macquarie for the annual NSW & ACT family history conference - I usually try to attend these conferences if the program is interesting and the host city is relatively easy to travel to. When I lived in Canberra I went to quite a few so there are lots of geneafriends that I like to catch up with.

Back in Brisbane by the first weekend in October so that I can go to the In Time and Place conference on local and family history organised by History Queensland, the Genealogical Society of Queensland and the Queensland Family History Society. There will be no shortage of blogging posts from these events and it is good to see geneablogger Alona (Genealogy & History News) spreading the word about these major events coming up. Read her round up of national and state events here.

Attention regional delegates. Thanks to the generous support of the State Library of Queensland, the Conference Organising Committee is delighted to offer free registration to regional delegates from areas beyond south-east Queensland. For details and to apply, see the website or contact by email, by 24 July 2015. Fantastic offer if you want to attend and live outside south-east Queensland. 

Even if you can not personally attend these events there will be lots of geneabloggers tweeting, Facebooking, or using Google + to let people know what is happening at each of these events. It is amazing what you can learn from social media at genealogy events.

The last week was also busy with lots of writing. I have done a second edition of my first ever research guide What Was The Voyage Really Like? which was published in 2010. So much more is online now and you really do need to revisit your research from time to time. The new edition should be published in July so watch out for that.

Week 39 in my 52 Weeks of Genealogical Records in 2015 is on old age pension records and again I found that there are more records out there than we might think. Doing simple keyword searches in online archive catalogues can turn up some amazing record series. Of course most are not name indexed or digitised but if you can visit and search yourself it might be worth while.

This coming week I am giving a talk at Deception Bay Library on Thursday and on Tuesday I am going to Bribie Island Library to hear a talk by Helen Smith. Something else to blog about.

Research wise I haven't done much except ask Trove to send me emails when family articles from the Telegraph and Daily Standard become available on Trove. It is amazing how many reference there are to my families in these two newspapers - they were obviously not Courier Mail people. Are other Brisbane people finding this too or is it just my families?

Until next week have a great genealogy weekend.

Free ebooks, talks & cruising - Genealogy Notes 24-31 May 2015

Hard to believe today is the last day of autumn and tomorrow will be winter. But then it never really gets that cold up here and only occasionally do I miss those frosty Canberra mornings when it looks like it snowed all night. Still half the year is almost gone and my year long projects keep pottering along - cataloging my library into LibraryThing, scanning my old photos, tidying up my really old genealogy research including scanning old photocopies which have seriously faded over the last 20-30 years. Don't get me started on all the old rusty staples and paper clips I'm finding in my files!

Even if you could finish your family history (and I don't believe you can as new information keeps turning up with new digitised resources eg Trove and I'm seriously staggered at how many times  I keep finding new newspaper articles on my family) you would never finish looking after your family records. Updating software, migrating files, and with all of our wet weather in early May we have had a serious mould outbreak. Something we never saw down south. So housework was the main winner this week!

However I did manage to go to Redcliffe Library and give my Warning Warning Tips & Tricks to Avoid Common Mistakes. It was a great audience and I actually went a little over time for the first time in ages. As usual the presentation is on the Resources page of my website, scroll down to Presentations. My next talk for Moreton Libraries is not until 11 June and it is at Deception Bay.

Lorikeets

Before then on 9 June I have the pleasure of attending Helen Smith's talk on Death Certificates and Medical Terms. Best of all I don't even have to travel far as Helen is giving the talk at the Bribie Island Library! Afterwards we will be lunching on the beautiful Pumicestone Passage.

I hope it is one of our clear blue sky days so that Helen can truly see Paradise. These little guys visit me throughout the day - we have lorikeets and rosellas visit as well as crested pigeons, doves, butcher birds, magpies, peewees and even the humble sparrow. It can be a bit distracting trying to write and watch them at the same time!

Pale crested rosella

With only six weeks until I am off on my Baltic genealogy cruise with Unlock the Past I am doing last minute trip planning and making final payments. I always like to pay for as much as I can before I go to save any last minute issues. Sharing a cabin with a friend from the Gold Coast will be a new experience for me but it is a great way to keep travel costs down and have more money for side trips and souvenirs. Alona (Lonetester) has just posted her five reasons why she is looking forward to the Baltic cruise - read them here.

As this will be my first European holiday since 2000 and the first time I have traveled to the Baltic I am maximising my holiday time and leaving my work and voluntary commitments back on Bribie.

This means I am hoping that everyone will send me their National Family History Month events before the end of June so that I can add them to the web calendar. Any events received while I am away will not go up until after I return. I am also sending out the launch invitations and getting the launch program finalised before I leave too. I return on 27 July and will have just three days to get over jet lag, get back up to speed and fly to Adelaide on 30 July for the launch the next day. Wish me luck!

Five years ago my first research guide What Was The Voyage Really Like? was published by Unlock the Past. It doesn't seem five years but I have spent the last few days doing a second edition and it really is amazing how much has changed in just five years. Records have been digitised and are now available online for ease of access and being able to do your own searches is fantastic. The ongoing development of Trove has made is so much easier for us to find photographs of ships, for example, before we could only do by individually searching each of our state libraries collections. It really is a fantastic time to be doing family history research, I only hope that those doing it online also realise there are still a lot of resources in our libraries and archives that are not online.

Although I am not a great ebook fan I do love a bargain and Thomas MacEntee (Geneabloggers) (USA) quite often advertises free ebooks on Facebook and just this morning I downloaded another title. GenEbooks (Australian) also has discounted specials or a free title which I try to remember to download if the title interests me. I now have quite a collection of free genealogy titles on my Ipad which will probably accompany me to Europe and help pass those long hours in the air or on stopovers, assuming I get sick of shopping in Dubai.

Otherwise I have not done too much genealogy or blogging this week but at least the house is clean and even the gardens were weeded and watered. Since the flood earlier in the month it has not rained at all and everything looks dry. Have another great genealogy week!

Webinars & Blogging magic - Genealogy Notes 17-23 May 2015

Sometimes I wonder if my fear of technology is real and attracts things to go wrong or I am just unlucky. During the week I gave a webinar on Queensland resources online for the Society of Australian Genealogists (SAG). Two days before we did a rehearsal to overcome my fears (it was only my second webinar presenting) and there was no problem. Everything went well and was familiar to me from the previous time. Come the night I could hear them but they could not hear me! After a little bit of fuss on both ends we managed to both hear each other and I gave the talk.

I still find it hard to get into a webinar without seeing the audience but I was very pleased the following day to see feedback on Facebook and Twitter with people following up some of the tips for Queensland resources online. SAG also got good feedback on the night and it really is a good way for people to attend talks if they can't personally travel to the venue/speaker. The presentation is on the Resources section of my website, scroll down to Presentations (slides only, no dialogue).

Week 38 Trade Union Records continues my personal genealogy blog challenge 52 Weeks of Genealogical Records in 2015. Participating in a blog challenge does help you to focus on what to write about but it also helps to stay committed to writing regularly. My family stories have led to many new discoveries that would not have happened if I was only writing in a paper based journal or magazine.

My GGG Grandmother's handwriting in her bible

In preparation for my meeting with newly discovered cousins, I tidied up some of my Finn family research and worked out what I would take along.  They are my father's generation and descended from my great grandmother's sister. One of the things you hear repeatedly with family history is that you should trace all the siblings too as you just don't know who ends up with what. How true in this case as I was able to see my GGG grandmother's diary in which she had written her name, Mrs Sarrah Fegan of Glasnargit (Ireland).

Sarah gave the bible to her daughter (also called Sarah) and when Sarah (the younger) and her husband John decided to emigrate to Queensland, Sarah brought her mother's bible with her. Their daughter Sarah Jane later became custodian of the bible and it is now with one of Sarah Jane's granddaughters (not called Sarah thankfully as it can be confusing). It was fantastic seeing the bible and reading something that was written in 1861 by my GGG grandmother. Did she ever contemplate that the bible might end up on the other side of the world or that it would still be treasured over 150 years later?

Sue White my cousin on the Finn side of our family tree

But how did we find each other? In 2013 I blogged about the three Finn brothers who went to WW1 (see my blog post here) and my cousin googled their names looking for some military information on them. She discovered my blog post and my website and realised that we shared common ancestors. A quick email to confirm and even though we live in different states, we met in Brisbane and swapped information, scanned some photos and even took some new photos. Great day.

We have some distant cousins on Max's side coming for lunch this week. We met them on our 2007 trip to Norfolk Island for the bicentenary of the closing of the first Norfolk Island convict settlement. We have kept in touch ever since. But as my first example shows, you don't have to travel thousands of miles to meet your relatives, all you need to do is blog and they will find you. Magic!

This coming week I am giving a talk at the Redcliffe Library for Moreton Bay Region Libraries as part of their genealogy program and one further talk to do before the end of the program. I am pleased to say that they have also asked me to do ten talks during National Family History Month in August so that will keep me busy. I wish I was busier adding events to the NFHM web calendar with Victoria currently leading with the number of events. Some states and territories have yet to see any events added.

There is a Skype meeting of AFFHO (Australasian Federation of Family History Organisations) on Monday so I will be doing a report on NFHM 2015 progress so far and hopefully getting some more society support from AFFHO members. But you don't have to be a member of AFFHO to add your August events to the NFHM web calendar and to be in the running for some great prizes.

Until next time, happy researching.