Week 38 (Sept. 17-23): A Document with Personality - #52Ancestors

I do love wills - they are often documents with so much personality!  They are fascinating documents and (potentially) give so much information about the family of the individual who wrote it as well as about the individual themselves.

I have had great luck with wills in my family history research.  They have provided me with invaluable clues - the surnames of married daughters, which children have survived a parent, details of property held and much more.  Getting the most out of the wills I have found has sent me chasing details of executors and witnesses - often relatives, as such a task was not given to strangers.  Who was each person mentioned, and how did they relate to the originator of the will?

My favourite will is that of my great great grandfather David Mulholland, who died in 1902.  The will itself is quite brief and names his wife and surviving children, and it is definitely a document with personality.

Original handwritten will of David Mulholland

A transcription of the will reads :

This is the last will and testament of me David Mulholland of Eurobin near Kilsythe in the Colony of Victoria Farmer.

I give devise and bequeath unto my wife Eliza Jane my dwelling house and furniture and all the land around the house to the railway fence for her life time and each of the two sons pay her five shillings per week for her life time the sons names are Henry and James.  My son David will receive fifty pounds cash.  James will get the homestead paddock and the paddock known as O’Donnell and also the house and land after Mrs Mulholland’s death.  Mrs Mulholland to do with as she likes with the furniture.  Henry is to have all the land across the Ovens River known as Watonga and all the cattle are to be equally divided between James and Henry.  My daughter Mary (Mrs Pape) one shilling and my daughter Ellen (Mrs Stoddart) one shilling.  My daughter Jane twenty pounds.  My daughter Priscilla (Mrs Clark) ten pounds and the balance of the cash to be divided in equal parts between James and Henry after all my debts are paid. 

Considering that David had over 600 pounds in the bank at the time of his death, the daughters who received a shilling each might feel a little slighted, as might his wife who gets to dwell in the farmhouse for the rest of her life but does not own it, and receives 10 shillings a week from the two sons who farmed the land with her husband but she has no money of her own left to her by him.

Also a source of extremely useful information is the probate record attached to the will, especially the Affidavit of Statement which contains a statement of assets and liabilities - basically a list of what David owned and how much it was worth.  The first page of this list (4 pages long in total) details the three parcels of land he owned - subsequent pages listed crops, livestock, farming implements, carriages, harness and saddlery, furniture, cash on hand and money in the bank.  Any debts owed to David, and any debts he owed others were also listed.  All fascinating information and a great insight into the family.

Page 1 of David Mulholland's Statement of Assets and Liabilities

David Mulholland owned 3 parcels of land that formed his farm, and the Statement of Assets and Liabilities details each, and gives quite a bit of information.  For the first parcel of land, it tells us the following details : All those pieces of freehold land containing 132 acres 3 roods and 1 perch more or less being special allot. 6H, allotments 7A and 7B of section 25 and part of allotment B5, Parish of Barrwedgee County of Bogong fenced partly post and two rail partly rail and wire 40 acres partly cleared remainder used for grazing with 3 room stone house with three weather board rooms and outhouses erected thereon municipal assessment 33 pounts per annum valued at 665 pounds.

Subsequent pages give details of the various livestock David owned, various cattle (some noted as being in poor condition), a very old bull, a pony mare, a pig - so much detail in a document with so much personality.

Who Do You Think You Are Magazine October 2026

The latest issue of Who Do You Think You Are magazine is now available free online for Campaspe Library members via our subscription to Libby eMagazines.

Inside this month's issue : 

• NAI microsites remain offline for essential updates 
• Fold3 adds US WW1 records
• Findmypast adds Royal Navy Museums records
• Ancestry adds Isle of Man parish records
• Ripon Workhouse Museum reopens
• The wrong side of the blanket
• Away from home - Adopted, fostered, orphan, nurse child
• This is your life - using photographs to remember past generations
• My parents lived through turbulent times in the Middle East 
• Modern Marriage Records - researching marriages in England and Wales after civil registration
• Irish Research 
• Parish Burial Records 
• Do I have the right Sarah Kaye...

 

Week 37 (Sept. 10-16): A Small Detail I Love - #52Ancestors

One of my favourite family photos is the one below of my father Peter with his siblings and their father, Frank Walter Green.  Dad was one of 10 children and to the best of my knowledge it is the only photo of all 10 siblings together, which makes the scanned image I have even more precious.  

A small detail I love is that one of the brothers has a beer bottle balanced on his head!  That would be Ernest, known to all as Squib, the second eldest of the Green siblings.  

If there are any relatives out there who have another photo of all 10 siblings together, I would love to hear from you and am happy to share copies!

September 11, 25 Years On

It is hard to believe it is 25 years since the September 11 terrorist attacks. I doubt anyone will ever forget the events of the September 11 attacks, where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news:

• At 8:46 a.m., AA 11 slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
• At 9:03 a.m., UA175 slammed into the South Tower.
• At 9:37 a.m., AA77 crashed into the Pentagon’s west side.
• At 9:59 a.m., the South Tower imploded and fell, raining debris and ash on the city.
• At 10:03 a.m., UA93 crashed into a field in the Pennsylvania countryside.
• And at 10:29 a.m., the North Tower collapsed from the top down. A cloud of ash turned day to night in the narrow streets of lower Manhattan.

In those terrible moments between 8:46 a.m. and 10:29 a.m., nearly 3,000 men, women and children lost their lives.  The youngest was two. The oldest was 85. 

Where I live in Australia, the clock is 14 hours ahead of New York.  So at the time of the first attack, it was 10:46pm my time.  I was already asleep.  Like much of the rest of Australia, I woke up to the news of the attacks. 

My family heard the news on the radio at 7:00am - there had been a terrorist attack in the US and the World Trade Centre in New York had been hit by a hijacked plane.  We rushed to turn on our TV.  As the picture came on, the first thing we saw was a replay of the second plane hitting the south tower.  For several minutes we weren't sure if this was live, or had happened several hours ago.  Then we saw the towers fall.

I was late for work that day.

In the library where I work, we dug out an old TV from our storeroom and set it up out in the public area of the building, keeping the news on all day.  People spoke in more hushed voices than usual.  Everyone was shocked.

25 years later, the world still remembers.

Family Tree US Magazine September/October 2026

The latest issue of Family Tree US magazine is now available free online for Campaspe Library members via our subscription to Libby eMagazines. 

Inside this month's issue : 

• The Ellis Island of the West
• Behind the Scenes
• Ancestry.com: New Beta Tools
• Enhanced DNA Features
• Illuminating Family History
• Marshalling the Troops 
• Case Study: Civil War Soldiers
• Scribe and Seek - MyHeritage’s new Scribe AI tool.
• Writing a New Narrative 
• Whose broad stripes and bright stars - a history of US expansion in six landmark events.
• Funeral Home Records
• Retaking a DNA Test
• Finding Patriots through the Daughters of the American Revolution
• Cemetery records at a glance

Week 36 (Sept. 3-9): More Than a Name - #52Ancestors

Every family has their popular names - names that appear generation after generation regardless of fashion, forming a family pattern, becoming more than just a name.  There were also fads among names - copying that of the current Monarch and their family, for example, as well as using a traditional name common amongst ancestors.

Family naming patterns were frequent in many families, although they are by no means a reliable way of predicting the names of children.  Traditionally, the first son would be named for the paternal grandfather, the second son for the maternal grandfather and the third son for the father.  For females, the first daughter would be named for the maternal grandmother, the second daughter for the paternal grandmother and the third daughter for the mother.  Providing, of course, these names were not the same.  

Then, there are the families that seemed to delight in using unusual names for their children, and those who followed popular fads.  Horatio, for example, made a brief surge in popularity after Nelson's victory at Trafalgar.  Similarly, Adolf disappeared from German communities after World War 2.

In the 1700s the top five names for each gender were :
Boys - John, William, Thomas, Richard and James
Girls - Mary, Elizabeth, Ann, Sarah and Jane

In the 1800s the top five names for each gender were :
Boys - John, William, James, George and Charles
Girls - Mary, Anna, Emma, Elizabeth and Margaret

There was also the tendency, unusual as it may seem to us today, of reusing the name of a child who had died.  In the 1700's and 1800's this occurs frequently in my family tree, with the name of a child who has died in infancy being reused for the next child of the same gender born to the family.  

This can make research quite tricky, especially when a popular name has been used by several branches of a family.  In my Irish Mulholland family, for example, four brothers all named their first son James, after their father.  One child died at 2 days old and the name was reused 18 months later.  This meant there were five children named James Mulholland, born within five years and a few miles of each other.  Sorting out which records belong with which child is quite a challenge.

Then two of them married women named Mary.

Week 35 (Aug. 27-Sept. 2): A Spot on the Map - #52Ancestors

A particular 'Spot on the Map' would be the sheep station called 'Para' on which I was born.  My father worked there as a stockman for approximately 20 years, and my mother became station cook after their marriage.

Para Homestead

My sister and I were both born during our parents last years at the station.  Just before we reached school age, our family moved to the small town of Moama, where we lived for the rest of my childhood.

Woolshed, clean and ready for shearing

I have only a few clear memories of our time at the station.  I remember the homestead beside the Darling River, the creaking verandahs and gum trees all around. Trailing my father into the old woolshed, the smell of sheep and wool overpowering.

1971 flood, from the back doors of the homestead

My family was resident at the station during the 1971 flood, an event my mother has described to me, during which the road from the homestead to the highway was cut by floodwater for several weeks, isolating us all.

Both my parents were fond of telling stories about their time on the station, which both looked back on with fondness and nostalgia.