It's been a hectic few days. As I indicated last time, on Saturday I attended the VAFHO AGM and Seminar at PROV and it was a great afternoon, but it was a shame that not more people attended as the talks were really good. The AGM was no surprise with the existing committee being voted back in for another year.
Charlie Farrugia's talk on Victorian Wards was really interesting and it is surprising just how much is available on these children who were 'convicted and neglected' to use Charlie's words. There is even an index (1864-1893) on microfiche published by the Australian Institute for Genealogical Studies which makes access easier, if you have access to the microfiche (amazing how we start to want to see everything online). There is also PROVguide 60 Adoption, Wardship and Related Records which gives a lot of information on the topic.
Ada Ackerly's talk highlighted all the fantastic information that might be held on individuals in departmental correspondence files, equity files, non probate files and so on. However most of these types of records have no overall index and you need to look at individual year indexes which is why the records are not used as much as they should be. Ada has done quite a lot of indexing on various series and these are available at PROV in the reading room.
Sunday we left home early to get to the Maryborough Family History Group Fair and we took the heritage route through old mining towns such as Creswick, Clunes and Talbot and all the wattle along the roadside looked fantastic. Although it might explain why I feel like I have a touch of hay fever today.
The Fair was good and there were numerous historical societies and other groups with their records all on hand to assist people with their family history queries. Three speakers, John Tully on Researching the Goldfields, myself on Archives You Probably Don't Know but Should and Anne Howlett from Creative Memories on Heritage Scrapbooking also provided attendees with lots of information and answered lots of questions. It was good to catch up with my many friends and colleagues in central Victoria.
Today has been spent catching up on emails, tweets and blogs and some of the enewsletters I have read today include Eneclann with the latest Irish history and genealogy news; several days worth of Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter; and I have been catching up on profiles on GeniMates, a blog series on 'genealogists from all over the place'.
The other major task for today was to finally finish my two Congress papers for the 13th Australasian genealogy and heraldry congress next March. I have made more changes again today and I am starting to seriously think I am procrastinating! Tomorrow is the deadline so it will definitely all be over then. The issue, I think, is that the paper is due now, six months before the Congress and as we all know, things change quite rapidly in the genealogy environment. There is scope to have a handout with any changes but the handout won't appear in the Congress proceedings. I'll have a final read tonight then hit the Send button!
Checking my diary reminds me that the Unlock the Past Victorian history and genealogy expo at Geelong is this coming Friday and Saturday so there goes another weekend devoted to genealogy, not that I mind! As usual I will try and tweet from the venue and do an overall blog of the event.
Now domestic duties call - I have to go and cook dinner!
Sunday, 28 August 2011
Thursday, 25 August 2011
Genealogy notes 24-26 August 2011 Non Stop Genealogy
Well I finally got to cross off a few things off my 'to do' list. I wrote my blog on Writing Family History and although it is a bit longer than I originally intended, it covers most of the points I made in my presentation on writing resource guides.
I also made substantial progress on catching up with my emails but there are still a lot of blogs in my Google Reader that I need to at least take a peek at. So many good genealogy bloggers out there! If your new to this take a look at the Unlock the Past list of genealogy blogs for Australia and New Zealand and if you want overseas try Geneabloggers for a mind blowing list of blogs from just about everywhere.
While on the subject of blogs, My Heritage have asked me to do a guest blog on Australian news so that took a bit of time yesterday and should appear on Friday 26 August. I should point out that there is no payment involved, just the opportunity to reach a different audience and to share my knowledge with others.
I have found family relatives through My Heritage as well as Genes Reunited and Ancestry. Advertising family lines online can be a good way to pick up near relatives as well as more distant lines so I have a few generations of my families on each of the three sites. It does cost to be on so many sites but I would have missed linking up with some families if I hadn't. I have opted for the free or least expensive options which still let me link up with others.
I have also been catching up with some of the enewsletters I receive. I always like the Professional Historians Association (PHA) (Qld Branch) enews as I catch up with news of my Queensland friends. When I arrived home earlier this week, in my snail mail there was a copy of Circa, which is the professional journal published by the PHA's (Vic Branch). There are some great articles in that so I am looking forward to curling up and reading it once I have some of the other things out of the way. For information on Professional Historians Associations in other States see the Australian Council of Professional Historians Associations.
qsa-bulletin is enews from the Queensland State Archives and it is great for finding out what new records are available, what has been digitised or indexed, what seminars are on and so on. State Records NSW and Public Record Office Victoria (PROV) also have enewsletters which I receive as my families tended to move around quite a bit.
Today I will be spending time preparing for the Victorian Association of Family History Organisations (VAFHO) AGM and seminar tomorrow at PROV - I am a committee member and have been asked to stand again for the coming year. The two speakers following the AGM are Charlie Farrugia from PROV and Ada Ackerley who is well known for her many indexes of PROV records so both talks should be really good.
I also have to get ready for the Maryborough Family History Group Fair on Sunday as I am giving a talk on Archives You Should Know But Don't and I will also have a display table for the various Unlock the Past publications. It's only a couple of hours drive from our place and is a really historic part of Victoria's mining past so I am looking forward to the trip.
Well my coming weekend is almost non stop genealogy so I hope your weekend is equally blessed with genealogy time and if you are at either PROV or Maryborough Fair do come up and say hello!
I also made substantial progress on catching up with my emails but there are still a lot of blogs in my Google Reader that I need to at least take a peek at. So many good genealogy bloggers out there! If your new to this take a look at the Unlock the Past list of genealogy blogs for Australia and New Zealand and if you want overseas try Geneabloggers for a mind blowing list of blogs from just about everywhere.
While on the subject of blogs, My Heritage have asked me to do a guest blog on Australian news so that took a bit of time yesterday and should appear on Friday 26 August. I should point out that there is no payment involved, just the opportunity to reach a different audience and to share my knowledge with others.
I have found family relatives through My Heritage as well as Genes Reunited and Ancestry. Advertising family lines online can be a good way to pick up near relatives as well as more distant lines so I have a few generations of my families on each of the three sites. It does cost to be on so many sites but I would have missed linking up with some families if I hadn't. I have opted for the free or least expensive options which still let me link up with others.
I have also been catching up with some of the enewsletters I receive. I always like the Professional Historians Association (PHA) (Qld Branch) enews as I catch up with news of my Queensland friends. When I arrived home earlier this week, in my snail mail there was a copy of Circa, which is the professional journal published by the PHA's (Vic Branch). There are some great articles in that so I am looking forward to curling up and reading it once I have some of the other things out of the way. For information on Professional Historians Associations in other States see the Australian Council of Professional Historians Associations.
qsa-bulletin is enews from the Queensland State Archives and it is great for finding out what new records are available, what has been digitised or indexed, what seminars are on and so on. State Records NSW and Public Record Office Victoria (PROV) also have enewsletters which I receive as my families tended to move around quite a bit.
Today I will be spending time preparing for the Victorian Association of Family History Organisations (VAFHO) AGM and seminar tomorrow at PROV - I am a committee member and have been asked to stand again for the coming year. The two speakers following the AGM are Charlie Farrugia from PROV and Ada Ackerley who is well known for her many indexes of PROV records so both talks should be really good.
I also have to get ready for the Maryborough Family History Group Fair on Sunday as I am giving a talk on Archives You Should Know But Don't and I will also have a display table for the various Unlock the Past publications. It's only a couple of hours drive from our place and is a really historic part of Victoria's mining past so I am looking forward to the trip.
Well my coming weekend is almost non stop genealogy so I hope your weekend is equally blessed with genealogy time and if you are at either PROV or Maryborough Fair do come up and say hello!
Tuesday, 23 August 2011
Genealogy notes 21-23 August 2011 Rubbish As Memories
Sunday saw our little family catchup where we shared memories of days gone by and discussed what we might do this coming Christmas, our next family catchup. Afterwards I took the rubbish down to the bins (Mum lives in a complex and the bins had already been taken down to the front for collection the next morning). By random chance I opened the first bin that had been placed on the kerb and it was full of videos. While rummaging through other peoples' bins is not something that I normally do, in this case I couldn't help myself.
One of the titles had caught my eye - 'Joan's 80th birthday'. Joan was my mother's neighbour and she was a very interesting person in her 90s who we had got to know over Christmas/New Year 2009 when I spent quite a few hours with Joan looking into her family history. It was an interesting and well known family so I was able to show Joan various websites and she was so enthusiastic. So why were her videos and other personal items in the rubbish bin?
For various reasons, Joan's family had recently decided that she could no longer live alone, taking care of herself and so she had to leave her townhouse. Unfortunately we never got to say goodbye and by the time we arrived the unit was being cleaned out, ready for lease to someone else. I'm not sure who cleaned the unit out, whether it was the family or someone they paid to come in and do it. Whoever it was simply put a lot of her possessions in the rubbish bin. As we gazed into the bin we could see various aspects of Joan's life and interests just waiting to be taken away. Perhaps the family already had copies of the more important videos and had taken the more significant family items away already. I certainly hope so.
It depressed me, and still does, to think that when we are gone, or no longer able to care for ourselves, that all we hold significant, might simply be thrown into a rubbish bin. It is one of the reasons I wrote Your Family History Archives: A Brief Introduction and why I give a talk based around the book at various genealogy events. It is to remind my fellow genealogists and family historians to think about the future and what will happen to their own research and records at the end of the day.
Monday saw us fly back home to Melbourne and I'm happy to say that the weather here has been really lovely with sunny, blue skies although a little colder than Brisbane. There was a small mountain of mail which we are slowly working our way through, after dealing with all the bills first!
Tuesday was also a catch up day on various domestic chores, including a visit to the dentist and the builders were in. I have finally got around to putting doors on my study so that everyone will no longer see how much 'stuff' I have in there. Having been away for quite a bit since last April, the study needs a big clean up!
The one thing that I did achieve today was to finalise an update to my talk on Archives You May Not Know But Should which I am giving at the Maryborough (Victoria) Family History Fair on Sunday 28 August 2011.
Tomorrow I am going to write my 'writing family history' blog and start to catch up on emails, blogs and tweets I have put on hold over the last few months. I wonder if my life will ever really be 'normal'?
One of the titles had caught my eye - 'Joan's 80th birthday'. Joan was my mother's neighbour and she was a very interesting person in her 90s who we had got to know over Christmas/New Year 2009 when I spent quite a few hours with Joan looking into her family history. It was an interesting and well known family so I was able to show Joan various websites and she was so enthusiastic. So why were her videos and other personal items in the rubbish bin?
For various reasons, Joan's family had recently decided that she could no longer live alone, taking care of herself and so she had to leave her townhouse. Unfortunately we never got to say goodbye and by the time we arrived the unit was being cleaned out, ready for lease to someone else. I'm not sure who cleaned the unit out, whether it was the family or someone they paid to come in and do it. Whoever it was simply put a lot of her possessions in the rubbish bin. As we gazed into the bin we could see various aspects of Joan's life and interests just waiting to be taken away. Perhaps the family already had copies of the more important videos and had taken the more significant family items away already. I certainly hope so.
It depressed me, and still does, to think that when we are gone, or no longer able to care for ourselves, that all we hold significant, might simply be thrown into a rubbish bin. It is one of the reasons I wrote Your Family History Archives: A Brief Introduction and why I give a talk based around the book at various genealogy events. It is to remind my fellow genealogists and family historians to think about the future and what will happen to their own research and records at the end of the day.
Monday saw us fly back home to Melbourne and I'm happy to say that the weather here has been really lovely with sunny, blue skies although a little colder than Brisbane. There was a small mountain of mail which we are slowly working our way through, after dealing with all the bills first!
Tuesday was also a catch up day on various domestic chores, including a visit to the dentist and the builders were in. I have finally got around to putting doors on my study so that everyone will no longer see how much 'stuff' I have in there. Having been away for quite a bit since last April, the study needs a big clean up!
The one thing that I did achieve today was to finalise an update to my talk on Archives You May Not Know But Should which I am giving at the Maryborough (Victoria) Family History Fair on Sunday 28 August 2011.
Tomorrow I am going to write my 'writing family history' blog and start to catch up on emails, blogs and tweets I have put on hold over the last few months. I wonder if my life will ever really be 'normal'?
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