It's been another busy week with two talks. First I gave my Love Sex and Damn Lies talk to the Sunnybank District History Group. Whenever I talk about the scandals in my own family, there are always lots of comments and nearly everyone else has their own family scandals to share. Does nobody have a boring family history?
The second talk was done in the luxury of my own study. Not that the study is luxurious, just the fact that I didn't have to drive anywhere! I participated in the Society of Australian Genealogists Virtual Lost Weekend looking at Black Sheep via a series of eight webinars. The technology can be a bit daunting especially when things don't go quite right but after a shaky start everything settled down. My section was on Asylum records for Missing Ancestors and I did a round Australia tour of asylums and where to find the records. Feedback has been good and you can see a copy of the slides on the Resources page of my website, scroll down to Presentations. The talk was the same one I did the previous weekend in Coffs Harbour.
In preparing for this week's U3A session I discovered yet another sibling of Henry Spencer (Max's grandfather) came out to Queensland. His sister Elizabeth came out with her husband and family and I've never looked for them as Henry was supposed to be out here by himself. Now I have found his brother Adkins Robert Spencer (who left no descendants) and I will have to trace his sister's family to see if there are any other cousins. Obviously the two brothers were in contact back home and mentioned what a great place Queensland is to live with its blue skies and warm winters. Had to be better than the Midlands of England!
Coming up this week I am giving a talk on my personal view of DNA for family history research to the Bribie Island family history group.
Preparing the talk has been useful as it has helped me to clarify my thinking about my own results so far and where I should go next. If I really want to try and identify James Carnegie's father then I need to track down my male Carnegie cousins and see if one will consent to a Y DNA test.
Mum has now down a DNA test for me and still waiting for those results. This will mean that if I get any matches that don't also match with Mum then they will be on my father's unknown paternal side. Actually the Carnegie DNA will help to narrow that down further again so perhaps I need to test more than one Carnegie cousin.
Last week's Diary blog was included in Crissouli's Moments in Time Friday Fossicking for 2 Jun 2017. I like these compilations of what other bloggers have seen as interesting during the week. When I am pushed for time it is good to scroll through the roundups and just quickly look at interesting posts. Crissouli has a particular interest in Irish research and there are always new posts on Ireland and all matters Irish.
New projects and resources seem to be happening daily. The latest FamilySearch research news has Victorian cemeteries - transcriptions 1850-1988 listed which will be a good resource once finished. Volunteer indexing projects certainly make it easy for us to find those elusive ancestors especially if we can't travel to search in person.
Findmypast announced Scottish Post Office Directories were now available, over a hundred different directories. Looking at the full list I found several that I want to look more closely at. Directories don't provide a lot of family information but they can confirm where people were living and what their occupations were. You can also see who else was living nearby.
National Family History Month in August is fast approaching so make sure your organisation's events are added to the web calendar so that others know what is happening. Societies often get new members during the month as others find out how rewarding being a member of a society can be.
Next week is a quiet week of catch up and personal research. There is a small pile of papers relating to some of my discoveries in recent weeks which need to be entered into the database, filed or followed up. And my reading pile, plus the e-reading file. My final talk for the financial year is at Ipswich Central Library on 20 June on Demolishing Brick Walls.
Have a great genealogy week and until next time, happy searching.
The second talk was done in the luxury of my own study. Not that the study is luxurious, just the fact that I didn't have to drive anywhere! I participated in the Society of Australian Genealogists Virtual Lost Weekend looking at Black Sheep via a series of eight webinars. The technology can be a bit daunting especially when things don't go quite right but after a shaky start everything settled down. My section was on Asylum records for Missing Ancestors and I did a round Australia tour of asylums and where to find the records. Feedback has been good and you can see a copy of the slides on the Resources page of my website, scroll down to Presentations. The talk was the same one I did the previous weekend in Coffs Harbour.
In preparing for this week's U3A session I discovered yet another sibling of Henry Spencer (Max's grandfather) came out to Queensland. His sister Elizabeth came out with her husband and family and I've never looked for them as Henry was supposed to be out here by himself. Now I have found his brother Adkins Robert Spencer (who left no descendants) and I will have to trace his sister's family to see if there are any other cousins. Obviously the two brothers were in contact back home and mentioned what a great place Queensland is to live with its blue skies and warm winters. Had to be better than the Midlands of England!
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| James Carnegie - father unknown |
Preparing the talk has been useful as it has helped me to clarify my thinking about my own results so far and where I should go next. If I really want to try and identify James Carnegie's father then I need to track down my male Carnegie cousins and see if one will consent to a Y DNA test.
Mum has now down a DNA test for me and still waiting for those results. This will mean that if I get any matches that don't also match with Mum then they will be on my father's unknown paternal side. Actually the Carnegie DNA will help to narrow that down further again so perhaps I need to test more than one Carnegie cousin.
Last week's Diary blog was included in Crissouli's Moments in Time Friday Fossicking for 2 Jun 2017. I like these compilations of what other bloggers have seen as interesting during the week. When I am pushed for time it is good to scroll through the roundups and just quickly look at interesting posts. Crissouli has a particular interest in Irish research and there are always new posts on Ireland and all matters Irish.
New projects and resources seem to be happening daily. The latest FamilySearch research news has Victorian cemeteries - transcriptions 1850-1988 listed which will be a good resource once finished. Volunteer indexing projects certainly make it easy for us to find those elusive ancestors especially if we can't travel to search in person.
Findmypast announced Scottish Post Office Directories were now available, over a hundred different directories. Looking at the full list I found several that I want to look more closely at. Directories don't provide a lot of family information but they can confirm where people were living and what their occupations were. You can also see who else was living nearby.
Next week is a quiet week of catch up and personal research. There is a small pile of papers relating to some of my discoveries in recent weeks which need to be entered into the database, filed or followed up. And my reading pile, plus the e-reading file. My final talk for the financial year is at Ipswich Central Library on 20 June on Demolishing Brick Walls.
Have a great genealogy week and until next time, happy searching.
