Rockhampton Seminar & Travelling the Burnett - Genealogy Notes 28 Oct - 11 Nov 2015

Yes I have been away from the keyboard for a while. A week's holiday (and I actually did no work, blogging, writing or anything much else) at lovely Bargara near Bundaberg. Max has a 94 year old aunt that we like visiting - she has some great memories and stories of his mother's family. We also spent some time with her youngest son.

Keen members of the Central Queensland
Family History Association 

As Bundaberg is only about 4 hours from Rockhampton it was a great opportunity to present an afternoon of talks to the Central Queensland Family History Association. I did two talks before afternoon tea and two after and although four talks is a stretch, everyone was still really enthusiastic at the end. As usual I have put the four presentations on my website, go to the Resources page and scroll down to Presentations.

By doing this, it takes away the need for the attendees to madly note urls, points of interest or whatever, they can simply sit back listen to the talk knowing they can go home and look at the slides again. In the four hours I covered lots of different kinds of archives, church records, knocking down brick walls and finding online pictorial collections. I also gave away as lucky door prizes one of my books and some issues of Inside History Magazine, kindly donated by them which also had people enthused.

Our display of Unlock the Past titles was appreciated and there was some keen buying with authors Chris Paton, Thomas MacEntee and myself as the popular authors of the day. The Unlock the Past genealogy cruise to the Great Barrier Reef next March was also promoted by the Society as quite a few of their members are planning to go on it as part of their 30th birthday celebrations. I am a bit sorry now that I am not going on that one as they are a great group of people and will be enthusiastic geneacruisers.

The Big Orange at Gayndah

We spent the next day looking around Rockhampton, Max was last there with the army in 1968, and we also went down to Yeppoon and Emu Park. As we didn't want to travel back home the same way we decided to do a leisurely trip down the Burnett Highway. There wasn't a great lot of traffic so not a lot of tourists which is a shame as there is so much history along this highway. I was going to include our adventures here but it became too wordy so now a separate blog post on my website - read it here.

Although we were travelling I still followed social media as that is where you can learn all kinds of new information. Only today I found out that Victorian BDMs have now removed the search fee from their site. A quick test for some of my names and it seems to be an improved search too. But if I hadn't seen the posting on Facebook I would not have realised it had changed. Of course these exciting news snippets tend to sidetrack you from whatever you originally started out to do.

I subscribe to the Queensland BDMs free enewsletter which has updates on what is happening along with some interesting stories. Read the latest issue here and it includes a link to subscribe.

A big development, at least for us, is that we have finally decided to get a landline again to have greater internet capacity. The mobile wi fi has served us well but most months I was running out of data and going slow. I am still keeping the mobile wi fi at a reduced level as we still trip around or head down to Mum's and need it then so together slightly more expensive but way more data. I can feel a few more webinars, podcasts and other exciting adventures coming up.

As usual I have come home to a mountain of everything to catch up on so until next week, have a good genealogy time and have lots of exciting discoveries.

Online seminars & New Resources - Genealogy Notes 18 - 27 Oct 2015

This last week has been interesting thanks to a fishing competition which meant I was home alone for 5 whole days and 7 nights. Yes I could have done some spring cleaning, some gardening and other domestic goddess stuff but I decided, with a birthday looming, that I would spoil myself. I started out data entering all my new data and filing things I had discovered while I was incapacitated with my broken elbow.

Relooking at these finds sent me in search of other discoveries and even in the last couple of months new resources have gone online and I found even more to get excited about. In Findmypast I think I have found a death notice in the Irish newspapers for my GGG grandfather Robert Fagan in Wicklow, Ireland - the name, age (80 years) and place (Glasnarget) are all spot on but no one else is mentioned in the notice. It is not a common name in the area but I would like to find more confirmation.

An intriguing sentence at the end is - American papers please copy. Does this mean that while his daughter Sarah Fegan came to Queensland, did some of her siblings or Robert's siblings or other relatives go to America? Something else to follow up!

But the point is that the last time I looked in the Irish newspapers there was no result for him at all so you really do need to go back and look regularly. I have particularly noticed this with Trove and since they have added the Brisbane Telegraph and the Daily Standard I have found lots more references to my families than I ever did in the Courier Mail. You have to check every newspaper as it may be totally new information or perhaps just slightly different.

While I made some really interesting discoveries in all those digitised newspapers, it did seem to soak up the hours or else it got dark early that day!

On Facebook I noticed that Kerry Farmer from the National Institute for Genealogical Studies was giving a free webinar on local history for genealogy and fresh from the History Queensland family and local history conference (see my review) I decided to listen in. Only a small group attended which surprised me, but Kerry squeezed an amazing amount of information and sources into that hour.

While I was familiar with most of the sources some of the NSW examples were new to me. I hadn't realised that you could get all those exciting parish maps online free. I was madly trying to write down URLs while Kerry kept talking so that I could follow up later. She also reminded me about QueryPic which I used to use a lot when I lived down south but since coming north it seems to have slipped out of my mind. I could have really used it in my keynote talk at the History Queensland conference but QueryPic is now back in the forefront of my search strategies again. So a great hour of reminders and new things and all for free. Thanks Kerry.

Sketch of my GG grandfather John Finn
 in the Brisbane Truth 

Week 42 Gaol and Prison Records in my personal genealogy blog challenge 52 Weeks of Genealogical Records in 2015 had me delving into Trove again and yes more references to all my criminal ancestors. It is a rainy afternoon as I write this and I am so tempted to open up Trove and just have a little browse. Yesterday was Trove Tuesday (actually every Tuesday is Trove Tuesday) and many of my Geneablogger friends do a Trove Tuesday post. It is really interesting to see what others find on their ancestors. Another great way to spend some time!

Genealogy Sunshine Coast have asked me to do an all day seminar as a grand finale for National Family History Month 2016 which sounds a great way to end a genealogy and family history month. I haven't quite got around to thinking about NFHM 2016 just yet but I will have to start thinking about sponsors and planning soon as August has a way of catching up to me. Sponsors and ideas are always welcome and as 2016 will be the 11th year I am hoping for a new look.

In a week or so I will be in Rockhampton presenting 3 talks to the Central Queensland Family History Association so that will be exciting. The talks are all done and I will have some of the Unlock the Past research guides for sale too including my own titles. We are planning to go up the Bruce Highway and come back via the Burnett Highway to see a little more of that part of Queensland.

Mum, a cute me and my baby brother

My mother has just told me that it is 6 weeks to Christmas and asked what are we doing this year. I am having trouble even realising that 2015 is almost over. It has been a big year with broken limbs and time spent in hospitals and doctor's waiting rooms so a quiet uneventful Christmas/New Year sounds good to me.  But Mum is a traditionalist so I need to start giving it some thought but my grandmother's rum ball recipe has leapt to mind. I always loved them!

Next week is Melbourne Cup, my birthday (the old Guy Fawkes night
for those old enough to remember) and I will be doing what I love most, travelling. Diary will be coming from an exotic Queensland location yet to be disclosed but one I always love going to. Have a great genealogy week and remember, keep looking for new information online, it can pay off.  

Convict records & more talks for 2015 - Genealogy Notes 10-17 Oct 2015

Famous last words from last week were that I had no more genealogy talks for the year. A last minute opportunity presented itself to speak in Rockhampton at the Central Queensland Family History Association. I will be giving three talks at an afternoon seminar which will be full on but I hope their members enjoy it. As I haven't been to Rockhampton since the early 90s I will also enjoy being back up that way.

Another report on the In Time and Place Conference is from Helen Smith, also one of the presenters at the conference. Read Helen's review here. It seems that everyone wants a repeat Queensland conference so I hope the History Queensland people take all the positive feedback on board.

Max and I in our convict gear on Norfolk Island

Week 41 Convict Records continues my personal genealogy blog challenge 52 Weeks of Genealogical Records in 2015. Writing that brought back great memories of our two trips to Norfolk Island and it really is good to visit where your ancestors once lived. Attending the reenactment of the convicts leaving when the First Settlement closed was really quite moving. It was easy to see why they would not have wanted to leave such an island paradise.

Max carrying all his worldly goods down to the rowboats

The only trouble with doing a weekly blog challenge is that the weeks seem to go faster!

One of my favourite resources is the Ryerson Index and they have just celebrated a milestone. Every death notice published in the Sydney Morning Herald since 1831 is now included in the Index. A total of 1,861,095 which is an amazing effort from the volunteers. They have also been indexing funeral notices and over 200,000 of those are also in the index from the Sydney Morning Herald. Well done everybody who has worked on the project over the last 17 years.

Of course the Ryerson Index now covers all states and territories but remember to check the coverage as not all newspaper titles are included and not all date ranges for each title.

Findmypast Fridays are always exciting with the release of new records and last week it was another 22 newspaper titles and more Staffordshire, Kent and Durham records. Another search for a great uncle involved in a serious crime in Staffordshire revealed more newspaper accounts with gruesome details. The Friday blog post is well worth checking out and it is every Friday. The week before it was England and Wales electoral registers from 1832 to 1932 which is really helpful trying to trace elusive ancestors between census if they were on the rolls.

MyHeritage announced that they had added about 46 million Swedish household records from 1880-1920 with images, that are now available, indexed and searchable online for the first time ever on MyHeritage Super Search. I don't have Swedish myself but that is a staggering number of new records. Their blog post has more about it here.

Another site adding lots of new records all the time is Deceased Online which is the central database for UK burials and cremations. They have 8 million records for London and 5 million records for Lancashire not to mention heaps of records for elsewhere. I keep up to date with the new additions by subscribing to the free enewsletter which is the easiest way to learn what's new.

It also means I receive lots of these free enewsletters but if something is not of direct interest to my own family history, then it is just a quick hit of the delete button. If it is relevant then I have the choice to either dive straight in or park it for a rainy day when I have more time. Keeping up with everything is the hardest part I find.

This coming week will be preparing my talks for Rockhampton, finalising my blog post and article for the December issue of Going In-Depth and working on the church records course for the National Institute for Genealogical Studies.In between I will be putting in some laps in the pool to help restrengthen my arm, keep up with the gardening (amazing how weeds always live and plants die when it doesn't rain) and enjoying our beautiful spring weather.