Week 37 - Closest to your Birthday - 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

As the number of names and dates in our family research grows, it is inevitable that some dates will coincide, that some significant events in our family's history will fall close to, or right on, our birthdays.  In my own family, both my parents and sister were born at the start of the year, in the Australian summer.  I'm off in August, in the depths of our winter.  Several cousins, however, have birthdays quite close to mine.  As both parents come from fairly large families I have over 30 cousins, so it is inevitable some dates are fairly close.

As I have delved into the family history finding coinciding dates has always interested me - although on one occasion it did lead me astray and gave me a valuable lesson in making assumptions and how easy it is to get it wrong.

A few years ago I discovered a family with three children all baptised on the same day, and jumped rather enthusiastically to the conclusion 'Triplets!!"  I'm sure many can immediately see my mistake here.  Closer examination showed that while it was in fact three siblings all baptised on the same day, one was three months old, the second was two years old and the third almost 5 years old.  I will never again make the mistake that a christening or baptism closely equates with birth!  Looking back I now know that several ancestors were baptised as children several years old rather than as babies - it was more common than I had realised.

Going back over the generations, several ancestors have birthdays on the same day as mine.  Others married, or died, on the same day as I was born, but sharing a birthday with a several times great grandparent is always going to be special.  Sharing a birthday or other significant date with our ancestors cam help us to connect with them - to feel a greater sense of being family and a more 'personal' connection to that particular individual. 

Who Do You Think You Are Magazine

The latest issue of Who Do You Think You Are Magazine is now available FREE online for Campaspe Library members via RB Digital eMagazines.

Inside this month's issue

• Go beyond 1837
  Pam Ross has some nifty tips to find ancestors before the start of civil registration
• Trace Huguenot roots
  Kathy Chater explains how to discover your family's connection to French Protestant refugees
• Getting Started Part 3: Visiting Archives
  Chris Paton finishes his beginner's guide with advice on finding offline resources
• Reader story
  Valerie Corby uncovered a double murder in her husband's tree
• Trick or feat?
  As Halloween approaches, Julie Peakman sorts the facts from the myths in the spooky world of Victorian spiritualism
• Plus...
  The best websites for researching the Merchant Navy; a new website for connecting with other family historians; the lives of ancestors who worked as cooks, and much more...

Week 36 - Work - 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 36 of #52Ancestors is about work - something pretty unavoidable for many of us.  Researching what my ancestors did for a living has been fascinating and at times eye-opening, and for many of the listed occupations I have had to do some research to discover what the occupation actually entailed.

While many of my ancestors were farmers and agricultural labourers, other occupations have included many trades.  Several generations of my Argent and Pike ancestors were millers, with sons apprenticing to their fathers and uncles and mills passing down through several generations.

Newbridge Mill in West Bergholt, owned by the Argent family

Another ancestor, Christopher Prentice, was a water bailiff, elected to the job.  Several articles appeared in the Ipswich Journal about his election during the late 1700s.  In the first article below he thanks the freemen of the borough for electing his to the position.

Ipswich Journal Sat 12 Dec 1778

Christopher clearly held the job for some time, as he applied to continue the position several years later in 1784.

Ipswich Journal Sat 10 July 1784

Week 35 - Back To School - 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 35 and I am behind on the #52Ancestors challenge again - but at least I am still going!

The topic for this week is 'Back to School', and education has played such a huge part in my life.  I was one of those kids who loved school, loved learning, loved books - it is no surprise I have ended up working in a library.  Neither of my parents had the opportunity to continue in school that my sister and I had, but both Mum and Dad loved to read and saw the value of education for their daughters.  They supported our education and were the parents who always attended parent/teacher nights, helped out at school working bees, canteen and library, and always attended school plays and other activities.  Both could not have been prouder when their daughters headed off to university, and proudly attended our graduations.

Me ready for school c1977

For my parents there were fewer educational opportunities.  Both left school early to go out to work to help support their families, but learning was still lifelong and libraries and books played a big part in their lives.  Any topic they wanted to know more about was only a visit to the library away, and reading non-fiction because you happened to be interested in the topic was how we were brought up.  My father even had the opportunity to go back to school later in life, doing a correspondence course from Sydney University in farm management and sheep breeding as part of his job on a sheep station.  Not bad for a man who had left school at Grade 6 to go out to work.

Ancestry.com updates DNA Ethnicity Estimates

For those of you who, like me, have done a DNA test with Ancestry.com, there is some interesting, and welcome, news. 

AncestryDNA has updated its ethnicity estimates, and the results are rolling out for all 10 million plus people who’ve tested with the company.  So if you haven't visited your DNA ethnicity data recently, now might be a good time to take another look.  I have included my new ethnicity results below.

There were two changes in the update:  firstly, more people have been added to the reference populations (the groups of people with well-documented pedigrees to whom our DNA is compared to make conclusions about ethnic origins) and secondly, the method of making the comparisons has changed.

In the last update, there were roughly 3000 reference samples assigned to 353 regions of the world. In this update, there are 16,000 reference samples assigned to 380 possible regions. This helps screen out less-likely regions and make more nuanced estimates between, say, Scandinavian and Norwegian or Swedish.

On the methodology side, in the last version, the bits and pieces of DNA were compared bit by bit, while the new update looks at longer stretches of DNA at a time. That also helps minimize the chances of misreading a person’s ethnic origins.

All of which is exciting for those of us who have found our DNA ethnicity results to be a little vague, and possibly not quite what we were expecting.  Mine are pretty much in line with my research - mostly English, with a bit of Irish, Scottish and German.  Although I'd love to know just where in my family history that Ivory Coast/Ghana 2% came from.  Any relatives out there with a clue, please contact me - I'd love to know!

Week 34 - Non-Population - 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 34 has a prompt of "Non-Population", which is a prompt that initially didn't make much sense to me until I discovered that several of the United States censuses had additional schedules which are referred to as non-population schedules.  A mystery solved.

As I have no US ancestors, I've decided to take a slightly different approach.

Several of my ancestors, when they first came to Australia, took up land and settled down to farm, several in quite isolated areas, distant from towns and even nearest neighbours.  What must their lives have been like, in the days before the easy transport of motor vehicles and the instant communication of telephones and internet.  We take such things for much for granted today, but before they existed the isolation must have had a profound impact on the lives of our ancestors.

For those who were the first generation of my family to arrive in Australia, the distances must have seemed vast, and the isolation even more extreme in such an alien landscape.  No easy access to things like medicine, no popping down the street to the local shops when supplies of something ran out.  For several, the nearest store was several hours away, and a visit to town might be only a once-a-month event.  Several of my ancestors came from big families, and suddenly found themselves on the other side of the world, establishing themselves in a strange land on a farm hours from other people, with no easy means of transport.

Communicating to family in the old country - even for those who were literate and had the means to send letters - would have taken months, and yet more months for a reply to arrive.  The isolation would have been extreme.  Non-Population indeed.

Week 33 - Family Legend - 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 33 is "Family Legend" and they are something we all have.  Finding evidence that proves a family legend is always hugely exciting - and finding evidence that disproves a family legend is so disappointing, but it all adds to the overall story of our family.

One family legend that had always fascinated me was a tale of an illegitimate child born in my father's family in the 1880's.  While not actually providing proof of an illegitimate child, a series of newspaper reports from 1888 were a fascinating find that built on the original story.

My great great grandfather, Walter Proctor Green, took a newspaper editor to court and sued him for libel after he published innuendo that suggested Walter's wife Isabella had been having an affair.  The case excited considerable local interest and was reported in several local newspapers.

From the Chelmsford Chronicle, Friday 5 October 1888

 The entire court case was reported in the papers, and finally came to a close later in the year.  After hearing all the evidence the jury retired to consider their verdict, and after only 23 minutes found editor Ernest Brown guilty on all counts.  He was sentenced to prison for three calendar months without hard labour.

The final paragraph in a lengthy report on the case

A final article appeared about the case at the end of the year, when it was reported that a committee had been formed to start a subscription to recompense Walter Green for the cost of the prosecution, which clearly showed where public sympathy lay.

From the Essex Standard, Saturday 22 December 1888

Portrait Detective

Do you have treasured family photos whose date your do not know?  Portrait Detective is a unique image-dating tool developed by Inside History and the State Library of New South Wales to help you accurately interpret and decode historic images, dating your photos and helping you solve the mystery of who they feature.

Drawing on the research of historian and portrait-dating expert Margot Riley, Portrait Detective brings together a selection of 100 images of Australian people sourced from the Library’s collections, dating from 1788 to 1955.  They cover a range of media such as oil paintings, water colours, drawings, miniatures, silhouettes, engravings and photographs, and all depict Australians from a variety of eras, classes, social contexts and walks of life.

Each image in the timeline has been chosen because its date and provenance is known, so you can see at a glance the changing styles of portraiture, art, dress and personal grooming over time.
Arranged in a chronological timeline, these images form an authoritative and historically accurate record and reference resource of the changing appearance of men, women and children in New South Wales over time.  As you browse through the timeline you can click on an individual image to learn more about:

• the subject
• the artist or photographer who created it
• the provenance
• the medium
• background details, and more.

There is also the Men's Style Guide and Women's Style Guide which explores changes in fashion and grooming through time.  The men's style guide explores coats, shirts, neckties, trousers, and hair and beard styles.  The women's style guide explores the bodice, neckline, sleeves, accessories and hair.

Using Margot’s expertise in dress and photographic history to decode the visual evidence in every image, Portrait Detective will equip you with specialised visual analysis skills to accurately interpret and date historical images of your own.