52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 2 - First and Last

First and last could be so many things - oldest and youngest child, first and last marriage, first and last day at school or work, first and last holiday, and more.

Taking a somewhat different slant on the topic, I have been reflecting on my first and last (or perhaps most recent) visit to the Public Records Office of Victoria for research.  Those two visits, roughly 30 years apart (suddenly I feel old), could not have been more different.

My first visit to the PROV occurred back in 1989, during my first year at University.  I had been researching my family history on a fairly casual level for a few years already, although while still in high school and living some 200km from the city actual research was less a priority.  I had written and spoken to several relatives about their knowledge of names and dates, and had a notebook full of family stories.  Facts and dates were recorded in another notebook, all jumbled in no particular order, written down as they were related to me by various relatives.  I had yet to discover things like family group sheets and research logs, and had very little methodology to my research. 

I was having a great deal of fun, however, and found the many family stories I was hearing absolutely fascinating.  Often when I heard a story from one member of the family I would immediately go to someone else involved in the same incident and ask for their view - and then I would have to reconcile the two different accounts.  Often there would be discrepancies in accounts - different dates and sequences of events, and I would have to dig deeper to resolve them.

That first visit to the PROV was eye opening in many ways.  A very patient lady introduced me to the basics of proper record keeping and filing, showed me how to use a microfishe reader, and introduced me to a variety of records held by the PROV.  I think my (relatively) young age and enthusiasm for family history influenced her to be far more tolerant of my lack of organisation that she would otherwise have been - and I was hooked.  Over the next few years as I undertook my degree in secondary teaching and librarianship, I haunted the PROV Reading Room and started to compile several folders of records.  Long before many records were available online, living in Melbourne and having access to the PROV, the State Library and other archives made a huge difference to my research.

My last visit to the PROV could not have been more different. It was conducted only a few days ago, from the comfort of my living room, via computer.  Without even having to leave home I accessed wills, inquests into deaths, shipping indexes and more.  I downloaded digitised records and made notes of records to request prior to my next visit to the PROV Reading Rooms.  It truely brought home to me just how much the way we research has changed over the years, and how many records are now available at our fingertips.  Even when the records are not yet available online, the internet has still made visiting the PROV in person so much easier.  There are explanations of records online and the ability to order in the items I want to view, cutting down on waiting time and maximising valuable research hours.

So my first and last visits to the Public Records Office of Victoria were totally different, not just in how I accessed records but also in how I viewed them, how I approached them and how I recorded them.