Talkfest, New Resources & Events: My Genealogy Week 8-14 February 2022

Well I should have known that once I went back to work (my business) I would have less time to do all the fun stuff I have been doing over December and January. While I enjoy giving talks they do take time to prepare and then present, either in person or via Zoom. This week there were three talks so there was no time for blogging. Also the reason why this weekly blog is a few days late.

Need to catch up with Weeks 6 and 7 of my 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks or I will be spilling over into 2023. If you missed my Weeks 1-4 they are on my blog page. There is no necessity to keep up as the idea is more to encourage us to write about our ancestors. However I do love a challenge.

Books

One of the big distractions for me over the last week is finalising my new book, Australian Genealogy Online. It will be my 12th research guide and published by Unlock the Past and available through Gould Genealogy. I am really excited to see the final product which might be some time this week. Plus there should be a few more spare minutes in the day.

Conferences/Expos

It has been a while since I got excited about travelling but August is shaping up to be a huge National Family History Month. First I am speaking at the AFFHO Congress on Norfolk Island which will be a great opportunity to see people in person. We first went there in 2007 then again in 2014 and were meant to go in 2021 but delayed due to Covid.

From our first visit to Norfolk Island 2007

I am also contemplating a trip to New Zealand for the Auckland Family History Expo and then the following weekend, the Christchurch Expo. I have been to the Auckland one a few times over the years and been to the Christchurch one virtually. Fingers crossed that borders stay open and that the pandemic is really on the way out.

Downsizing

During the week I gave the Genealogical Society of Queensland five boxes of books to either use, toss or resell for profit. The really sad part is that looking around my bookshelves in the study you can't even see where any are missing. My LibraryThing needs a total overhaul but I think I still need to do another cull and pass on books that may be useful to others. 

New Resources

MyHeritage have recently released their new online genealogy course for beginners in their Knowledge Base.  Pleased to say that I am one of the lecturers in the Australian section of the course. Although aimed at beginners there are probably tips and refreshers for more experience researchers. 

This week Ancestry has the following update, especially interesting for Southt Australian researchers 

• New South Wales index to deceased estate files 1859-1958 
• South Australian passenger lists 1845-1940
• South Australian Destiture Asylum ledgers and admissions to industrial and reformatory schools 1849-1913
• South Australian prison registers 1838-1912
• South Australian Supreme Court criminal records 1837-1918 and reports to the Police Coroner 1842-1967
• South Australia select tax and financial records 1838-1928 and returns of 1841 census
• South Australia Adelaide Hospital admission registers 1841-1946

Some really early dates there for South Australia. My Trevaskis family arrived in Adelaide in 1864.

Talks

On Thursday I actually drove up to Noosa Heads to give my presentation on Where Do I Start? in person to a group of enthusiastic people at Noosaville Library. 

On the way home I called into Sunshine Coast Hospital to see my surgeon and get the results of my latest tests. Reading the local newspaper while waiting, I came across this advert for my talk to Caloundra Family History Research.

My other talk this week was to the Port Macquarie & District Family History Society via Zoom. We almost settled there but ended up moving further north. Still love the place. My presentation was on using DNA to search for biological ancestors. A great audience and some lovely feedback.

Remember that you can see the slides of some of my presentations on the Resources page of my website. Where I am speaking is on the Events page.

What's Coming Up

This coming week is the Caloundra talk mentioned above plus a talk to the Cornish Association of Victoria on the Cornish in Queensland. Both sessions are via Zoom. I haven't spoken to their group since I left Victoria in 2012 and probably even a few years before that. But I still have their gift to me as a speaker.

That will be my last talk for February (six talks, not quite a record) so I can rest my voice for a little. Three talks coming up in March plus my two RootsTech Connect sessions. Don't forget to register for RootsTech as it is free and a huge range of speakers and talks. 

Hopefully I will find some time to get back to writing up those family history drafts now that I have a few other projects out of the way. 

Wishing you success with your genealogy research this week, take care and stay safe, Shauna.

Seafood platters, looking for UK cousins, talks & other news: My Genealogy Week 1-7 February 2022

I'm starting to fall behind and it is still early days in the year. Where did the last week go? Time flies indeed. Max and I celebrated meeting in Canberra 21 years ago. I seriously don't know where those years have gone. 

My son has recovered from Covid and managed not to give it to his pregnant wife. A relief for all and the birth of the first grandchild is now only about two months away. Not that I am counting. 

I am in the midst of my six monthly health checks and travelling to doctors and doing tests all takes time. After the session on Friday at the Sunshine Coast Hospital we called into Mooloolaba and the See Restaurant for a seafood platter and a couple of cocktails. 2022 will be my year of the seafood platter.

Blogs

I am just managing to keep up with the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks blog challenge. Week 5 was branching out and I decided to focus on my great grandfather Herbert William White and his siblings who all stayed in England. 

Using more modern genealogy resources helped me to identify who they married, any children and when they died. Although there are some gaps in the story as White is such a common name.

Diary is in tandem with the blog challenge so both are being written at the weekend when I have more time. Getting back to work has seriously dropped the number of hours decluttering, writing and researching.  

Bribie Genealogy

I was the first guest speaker for the year and it was all about FamilySearch and looking at all the different research strategies. You could easily spend days on their website. A small group then enjoyed lunch at Bribie Social at the RSL. I had the Juicy Lucy burger - turns out that has beetroot, bacon and egg plus the usual. Must have been the biggest burger I have seen ever. So shocked I forgot to take a photo.

Next month we have Judy Lofthouse talking about the 1921 UK Census which is on Findmypast.

Social Media

As I am weeding and tossing out my research files, books, binders etc, I have also started to look at social media. My target this week was Twitter and I had just over 1500 people I was following. 

When I checked their accounts many of them had not tweeted in years, even decades and some, sadly,  I knew had passed on. This shocked me to see their accounts still there. Obviously no one has closed the accounts down. 

I am now plodding through all the profiles and deleting any that have not posted within the last 12 months. As you can see I have already deleted nearly 500 accounts.

I also have to update my lists and include some of the more recent people I am in contact with in the Twittersphere.

I joined Twitter in September 2009 and I have never gone back and checked the accounts I was following. This has left me a bit depressed and it is another thing we have to remember to do - give someone your passwords and account names so that they can go in and turn them off. Or at least mark them closed if they want the account to be there forever. 

Will someone want to see my tweets in 50 years time? If I was doing a biography on someone then yes I might want to know what they were doing and posting about on Twitter. This topic is starting to broaden out into what should be archived!

Talks

Another invitation this week to do a presentation with MyHeritage in March. Getting back to basics using MyHeritage for research in Australia and New Zealand.

This morning I gave a talk to the Monash Library family history group on breaking down brick walls. The slides are on the Resources page of my website. They stay up for about six months.

A reminder that I am giving two talks at RootsTech Connect 2022 too in early March. Saw earlier today that they have 152,000 registered and it is not too late to join. And its free. So many sessions and speakers, somthing for everyone. 

All the events that I am speaking at are on the Events page of my website.

What's Coming Up?

A favourite photo of Dad with my son ca 1991

Two talks next week. 

Thursday sees me up at Noosa Library talking about where do you start which will be a refresher for the new year. I so much prefer in person talks. 

Finally at the end of the week on Saturday I am speaking at the Port Macquarie society meeting via Zoom. That will be about my search for Dad's biological father. 

A big week of talking!

On Wednesday I get the pleasure of listening to someone else speak at the Bribie Island Historical Society meeting. It will be good to see people again as the last time we all gathered was the Christmas party in December. 

Take care and stay safe. Happy genealogy finds too. Shauna

Blogs, Books, Talks & Other News: My Genealogy Week 24 -31 January 2022

The week has seen a major tidy up of my book shelves and a lot of the time it seemed to be just moving books from one room to another. But in the end I have a bag of books (mostly fiction) for the local secondhand bookstore and a few boxes of genealogy/local history books for one of the genealogy societies that I belong too. 

However, after taking my books to the local secondhand bookstore, I managed to come home with another six books for research purposes. Just a hopeless book addict!

I did get a few comments on Facebook about rehoming my books but you can only have so many books in one house. And at the end of the road, someone else will either toss them or call Vinnies or the Salvos. This way I can ensure the books that have an ongoing value will be rehomed with the right people. 

I had planned to do my laptops but they stayed in the too hard basket. Maybe next week.

Blogs

Still keeping up with the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks and Week 4 was Foundations and Curious as a suggestion. I chose Mary Anthony later Hosking as she died aged 93 years in the Penzance Workhouse in Cornwall. I was curious about life in a workhouse. Read about Mary here.

I also completed my guest blog post for the Genealogical Society of Queensland, four weeks early. Inspiration hit me while doing some research and I just wrote the post there and then. At least I don't have to worry about it in February. 

Books

I added more ebooks to Kindle on my IPad and noted that I know have quite a 'stack' there. I must start alternating between print and ebook. One that I definitely want to read is Nathan Dylan Goodwin's The Foundling which I seem to have forgotten that I purchased. Not sure how I managed that as I normally read his books the day I get them.

Currently reading Carol Baxter's Breaking the Bank which provides a good backdrop to Sydney in the late 1820s. 

Bribie Genealogy & U3A

Meetings start up next week for Bribie Genealogy and we have the year's speakers planned out. I will start off with a megalook at what you can do at FamilySearch. So many people only search the database and there is so much more that is not indexed and included in the historical records database. We are still meeting at the Bribie RSL which means that to attend people must be double vaxxed and be able to show evidence of that.

Bribie U3A has cancelled Term One due to Omicron on the Island. This means that the English Genealogy subject I was going to tutor is also cancelled. I'm still not sure what I will be doing in Term Two although getting to Sweden seems a bit remote at the moment.

Talks

Received another invitation to speak in February. This time it was the Cornish Association of Victoria and I haven't giving a talk there for over 12 years. However, I still have/use the lovely coffee mug they gave me last visit. My topic is the Cornish in Queensland and using my own Cornish mining families as examples. It will be nice to see some old faces as it will be via Zoom.

February is a busy talks month for me with six talks, three in person (Bribie, Caloundra and Noosa) and three via Zoom (Monash Library, Melbourne, Port Macquarie, New South Wales and the Cornish Association in Melbourne. 

Webinars

Watch out for free offerings of well known speakers. I accepted the free offer to Legacy Family Tree webinars on 29 January and had the opportunity to listen to Cyndi Ingle, Lisa Louise Cooke, Thomas MacEntee and Teri Flack. All topics to help you stay organised with your genealogy information. Everyone provided detailed handouts so that saved some note taking.

Keeping on top of my emails is a major problem for me and speakers gave various suggestions. It still comes down to time. I delete many unsolicted emails as well as spam that still manages to get through the filters. 

What's Coming Up?

Always check the Events page of my website for where I will be speaking, both in person and via Zoom. I am really looking forward to getting back into talks as I love meeting new people, seeing old friends and talking about genealogy to people. So much better than talking to myself in my study which is what happens when I have to prerecord talks. I really miss audience feedback during a talk.

Stay safe and well, until next week, Shauna