Family History Month 2024 Week 1 : My Genealogy Week 1 - 7 August 2024

 The first week went by in a blur of events, both in person and virtual.

1 August

Started the day with a visit to the Genealogical Society of Queensland library down at Wishart. The drive is long and often horrendous with traffic, but always good once I am there.

Had to be home by 6pm for the opening of Family History Month for two reasons. First I was announcing the winners of the Nick Vine Hall awards for 2024. Congratulations go to Genealogical Society of Victoria for their journal Ancestor and in the smaller societies category, Cape Banks Family History Society for their journal Kith and Kin.

Second I was guest speaker along with Heather Garnsey talking about our time in family history over the last few decades. Heather is most associated with the Society of Australian Genealogists in Sydney and I have been involved in many archival projects that have benefited family historians with greater access to records. Plus doing my own family history research since 1977. It was a great chat with Sonya Russell, President of AFFHO asking the questions. The hour went very fast.

Both Heather and myself received the Order of Australia medal as part of the King's Birthday Honours in June.

2 August

Presented a talk to Bribie Family History Association on D is for Diaries, outlining how shipboard, military and personal diaries can be used for family history research. It was a good session with some members keeping the chat going over lunch at the Bribie RSL. Since then a couple of members have written to me about diaries held within their own family collections.

3 August

Up early for the trip up to Caloundra for a one day seminar on DNA with Caloundra Family History Research. Helen Smith from Dragon Genealogy and myself each gave two talks. 

Mine were about my personal approach using coloured dots and clusters to organise my matches. The second talk was a follow on with Looking for Granddad, a case study searching for my biological grandfather. 

In July I finally had proof for my theory when another descendant from that male line matched with my brother. 

Granny is probably up there cursing me for my doggedness in searching for the truth but at the same time, she should be saying 'what a clever granddaughter'! Secrets will always come out with DNA so don't test unless you want to  know the truth.

Then the drive back home from Caloundra. Great day but a long one and my brain was mulling over all the things from Helen's two talks.

4 August

Sunday at last and I had promised myself the day in bed reading. But I was too restless with new research ideas so it was a good day doing my own family history on the computer.

5 August

One of my favourite Victorian libraries is Monash as they have a very active family history group. This time the presentation was virtual only rather than the usual hybrid set up. My talk was Where Do I Start which is aimed at beginners but can also be a good refresher talk for more experience family historians.

Lots of questions mostly not related to a beginners session but I managed to field questions and provide further references.

6 August

A meeting with my two Griffith University supervisors on the progress of my Ph D on the Incarceration of Women in Colonial Queensland. My Early Candidate Milestone is next week and I have to be ready to present and impress independent assessors. Otherwise I cannot progress with my Ph D. Happy to say I passed with flying colours and I am grateful to my two supervisors for their support.

7 August

A morning session of Genie Chats with members of the Bribie Family History Association via Zoom. These chats are a way of talking about specific subjects or following a theme for the term.

Rather a hectic first week for Family History Month but the fun is not over yet. You can still register an interest in events being held, some free and some paid. There are prizes to be won so visit the AFFHO website for more information.

What's Coming Up?

More meetings, talks both family history and Ph D, a writing family history workshop and more Genie Chats. There is also dinner at the Bribie RSL followed by the Bribie Island Historical Society monthly meeting. 

Have a great time during the second week of Family History Month in Australia and New Zealand. Until next time, Shauna.

What's new, Family History Month, Books, Talks & More: My Genealogy Months May, June and July 2024

Not sure where the last three months have gone but it has been an eventful time.

Back from my holiday which didn't go quite to plan. Missed seeing Belfast and Islandmagee, Shetland and my three-night stopover in Doha. However, I still managed to get to Sweden and spend some time with my little two-year-old grandson. What happened? Bad luck said the hospital doctor when I queried how I got bacterial pneumonia which led to a 11-day hospital stay in Liverpool, England.

Baptismal font
Canterbury Cathedral England

On the plus side I also managed a few days in The Netherlands in Amsterdam and Rotterdam before boarding the cruise ship. The first port was Dover, and it was really good seeing the white cliffs of Dover as we sailed in. 

The excursion to Canterbury Cathedral and Leeds Castle in Kent was good. 

From there we went to Ireland, and we saw the castles of Cashel and Cahir which was amazing. The next day I knew I was sick and confirmed with an x-ray in the ship's hospital. Thank goodness for travel insurance. 

Only a couple more medical appointments and apparently I will be as good as new. Not sure I believe that but I certainly hope it helps with my mobility issues. The pink walking cane is an eye catcher and often leads to people assisting me or giving up a seat for me. I would miss that. Stay tuned.

Blogs

Cashel Castle Ireland

Once out of the blogging habit, it is hard to get back to it. However I did complete another guest post for the Genealogical Society of Queensland. It was inspired by some new records on MyHeritage, marriages in New York. Read about my USA connection here.

Books

Many years ago, I catalogued all my library books into Library Thing. From time to time, I have added books but not every book and I have moved books around and even given some away. As a result, I have bought second copies which is a waste not to mention lugging them home in my suitcase. One of my promises to myself post illness was to update Library Thing and put the app on my phone. It is a tedious job checking, adding and deleting but I will now be able to find any book anywhere in the study.

Do I really have 641 books from 442 authors on my bookshelves? And that is after my massive cull and giveaway of books over the last year.

Extract from my Library Thing catalogue

Family History Month

Check out the new AFFHO website for Family History Month - they have dropped the national. It is now much easier to add events to the calendar for August. Have a look at August events.

Remember too there are prizes to be won. Simple to enter and free.

Genealogy Software

There is a new Version 10 for Legacy Family Tree software which I will have to download as I have Max's family in Legacy. I often move my own family between Family Tree Maker and Legacy as there are different features that I like.

Ancestry have introduced a paid product DNA Pro Tools which allows you to see the shared matches of your matches. Max is away fishing so I have quite a few hours set aside to check out what it does for my own DNA matches. Have heard good reports from others but I am looking to find three unknown biological ancestors all on Dad's side. 

New Records

Findmypast has new parish records for London, Middlesex and Surrey. Also over 320,000 new digitised newspaper pages. Anybody else finding it hard to catch up.

Online Events

On 22 June I attended the Society of Australian Genealogists one day seminar on Enhancing Your Family History with Artificial Intelligence. There were seven speakers looking at different aspects and certainly thought provoking.

Canal cruising Amsterdam

Talks

There are seven talks lined up for me during August so it will be a busy month for me. Some are virtual so that saves travel time and worrying about what the highway traffic will be like.

Check out the events page of my website for dates, places and topics. 

What's Coming Up

There are a number of events I'm looking forward to attending in August. Some in person and some virtual. 

I am also hoping to catch up with everything - so easy to get behind when you go on holidays or get sick or both. 

Emails multiply, my blog and genealogy journals/magazines falls behind and then there is my Ph D on the Incarceration of Women in Colonial Queensland. My one year milestone is coming up in August. The year has flown. 

Until next time happy searching

Staggering additions to online collections, NFHM and other genealogy news: My Genealogy Weeks 22 Mar - 30 Apr 2024

 My holidays are fast approaching and as usual, all the things I have to do seems to increase. The last four weeks have flown.

Bribie Family History Association

As Hon President and unofficial Tech Girl, this keeps me busy every meeting day. I have to get the projector up and running, the remote controls and the speaker's presentation. At the same time I have to try and talk to the guest speaker and any members who want to chat to me. So far no one wants to take on the tech side of things and I can understand why no one wants to be out front as President. 

Still things are usually OK on the day. The May meeting will be interesting - I am Tech Girl, I am chairing the BFHA general meeting and then I am the guest speaker with a talk on finding my Irish family online. By the time the meeting finishes I will be somewhat wrecked.

The FamilySearch workshop I ran for the group was very successful. There are so many aspects within FamilySearch for researching and recording our family history. Booked out both sessions and some lovely feedback on both the morning and the afternoon. Feeling quite chuffed. A lot of work goes into preparing these workshops so it is really nice to see it appreciated.

• All excellent, thoroughly enjoyed and learnt heaps
• Shauna is an excellent speaker and knows her subject well
• (enjoyed the most) depth of knowledge of speaker and humour in talk
• Found out things I didn't know
• All wonderful, enjoyed it immensely and very professional presentation
• Took me to another level that I didn't expect
• Very thorough and exactly what I didn't know I needed
• Shauna is an excellent teacher and she makes the talks very interesting
• Extremely well done Shauna is a wealth of knowledge

BFHA Book Club

One of our members has taken over the organisation of the club for me. This saves me additional visits to the library to pick up and drop off our book sets. Plus she will be suggesting the books which will be a surprise to me. So far we have had very different books each month. 

Our next selection is Judy Nunn's Khaki Town based around the bombing of Darwin in World War 2. Perfect holiday reading.

There is no May meeting as a couple of us will be away and the June meeting is put back a week so that I can attend.

Also loaded up my reading apps for the trip. Not ideal reading on my phone, but certainly beats carrying books around in my suitcase. I have enough Bluey books as it is.

DNA

Downloaded from Diahan Southhard So Far Genetic Genealogy: The first 25 years 1999-2024: Reflections from DNA Leaders and Luminaries. Yes another book to read (only 90 pages) but so interesting to see the changes in our own lifetimes. Although DNA has only been on my own radar since 2015 and that fateful test. 

Nick Vine Hall Awards

The awards closed on 30 April 2024. As the new convenor, on behalf of AFFHO, I am super excited to say that we have 22 entries from member societies. These have all been sent off to our three judges who will have the big job of reading and scoring the entries and then I collate the scores, organise the plaques and certificates and hand over to the AFFHO President. The Awards are announced during National Family History Month in August. 

Resources

I was somewhat shocked to read the latest newsletter from the British Newspaper Archive - they added half a million new pages in just one week. Staggering. Digitised newspapers are the gift that just keeps on giving as you find snippets or longer stores abour your ancestors and their families. What a great time to be researching your family history.

Another great mind explosion since last Diary was attending the FamilySearch 130th anniversary in Brisbane and finding out that they are using AI with free text collections. This will save enormous amounts of time indexing and will make everyone mentioned in a document accessible not just the primary person eg in wills. 

Here is an example from my FamilySearch workshop. The will is for Mary Hayes but I searched for Trevaskis and as you can see the words are highlighted in the transcript and in the original document. How good is that? Still experimental in their labs but coming soon.

Talks

Another great session at Noosaville Library on military ancestors just in time for Anzac Day. 

Just updated my website to reflect some of the new talks for the second half of the year. That includes events for National Family History Month in August, always a busy time for me. Go to the Events page of my website to see what is coming up - both in person and virtual.

What's Coming Up?

A mad week making sure I have everything I need for my trip. Ticking off a few items from my bucket list as usual - one of the big highlights is visiting Lerwick in the Shetland Islands (love Shetland the series) and a personal tour to Islandmagee in County Antrim where Dad's paternal family is from. The icing on the cake is seeing my little grandson and giving him his 2nd birthday presents in person. 

My 'to do' list for when I return is starting to look a little daunting and I always wonder should I slow down. Maybe in a few more years. Until next time, happy researching, Shauna

PS Next Diary will be the end of June.