A blog to talk about genealogy and family history, ask questions, highlight useful sites and share tips.
Friday, September 13, 2024
Week 37 (Sept. 9-15): Tombstone
Tuesday, September 10, 2024
Trove Tuesday - Search Tips part 1
To get the most out of searching Trove, there are a number of search tips you can use to optimise your results.
Phrase
searches
•
Enclose
search terms in quotes, eg:
– “John Argent"
– "South Australia"
elections
Wildcard
searches
•
Specify
wild cards or truncate word endings with an * , eg:
– math* tutor*
Boolean
searches
•
Use
AND, OR and NOT and brackets to create boolean expressions. You can use a minus
sign next to the word in place of NOT, eg:
– (cats AND dogs) NOT rabbits
– “Moreton Bay" -Brisbane
When looking for articles on the death of my great uncle Norman Clark in a shark attack, I use his name as a phrase search "Norman Clark". This looks for both words, together, as a phrase. Just searching Norman Clark, without the quotes, brings back any article with the two words anywhere in the article, even paragraphs apart. I then add a boolean term - AND shark - to only include search results that also contain that word.
So the search "Norman Clark AND shark bring back 278 results - articles from all over the country.
A treasure trove indeed!
Sunday, September 8, 2024
Inside this month's issue :
- 5 questions with: Steve Little - AI Program Director, NGS
- 100,000 Digital Books
- New and improved : Genealogy software
- Digitized records roundup
- Guidelines for AI and Genealogy
- MyHeritage launches new sub
- Heirloom Hunting
- Defying the Odds : One woman finds records of her family when she expected none.
- Family Inheritance : These five tasks will help you turn the boxes of materials you inherited from family into an organized archive.
- Memento Mori : These death-related heirlooms may seem macabre by modern standards. But they hold details that are valuable to modern genealogists.
- Treasure the Register : Tap into valuable Standesamtregistern—German civil vital records
- Flash Back : Handwritten details on the back of a photo suggest an unexpectedly complex immigration story.
- Cemetery Records
- Finding Newspapers at Chronicling America
- DNA Matches Without a Family Tree
- Obituaries
Friday, September 6, 2024
Webtember with Legacy Family Tree
Legacy Family Tree Webinars is back with another month-long, free online genealogy conference. Each Friday in September, join expert speakers as they cover a range of topics, from DNA testing to historical records and everything in between. There’s something for everyone.
There are a total of 20 Webinars scheduled, and all will be recorded and available for the rest of September for those who cannot attend them live. Quite a bonus for people like me living in Australia, where the time difference means the first webinar of each day starts at 12.15am!
So check out the range of topics covered and book yourself in!
Thursday, September 5, 2024
Week 36 (Sept. 2-8): 'We Don't Talk About It"
Every family has their secrets, the topics that, when raised, receive the response 'we don't talk about it'. It may be a scandal in the family, a story of disaster or a tragedy, but every family has those topics that are spoken of only in whispers, or not at all.
One such topic I discovered when I first began asking about my family history was that of my great uncle Norman Clark. I have written about Norman several times regarding his tragic death in a shark attack in 1930, when Norman was just 19 years old.
It was my grandmother, Norman's sister Gladys, who first told me he was a forbidden topic. As I started informally gathering names, dates and stories in my late teens, I only had one surviving grandparent, my mother's mother Gladys Daisy Pummeroy (nee Clark). When I first asked about her siblings, the only thing she would tell me about Norman was that he died at 19, it was very upsetting, and no one liked to talk about what happened. She also insisted I promise NEVER to question her youngest brother Russell about it. I duly promised.
Great Uncle Russell was an enthusiastic letter writer, and he and I corresponded for a number of years. While he was the source of many stories about the family, especially my mother during her childhood, he only raised the subject of his brother Norman once. While discussing his siblings (there were 12 Clark children, plus 2 half siblings from their father's first marriage) he commented 'and you know about what happened to Normie'. I responded that I knew he died at 19 and Grandma had made me promise not to ask about him. The following is his response in his next letter.
Norman was the villain of the family. When he was 15 he was placed in the Tally Ho Boys Home where he remained to my knowledge several years. I can remember Mother taking Lennie and I to visit him at times by horse and wagon. I believe he was kept there until he was 18, but eventually came back home.
I rather idolized Norman and used to follow him around. I got up to all sorts of tricks such as stealing fruit from trees, playing truant from school and other things.
Norman was taken by a shark a few months after he came home. I saw it happen and ran home to tell Mother “Normie’s been taken by a shark”. She didn’t believe me until the police came.
After the shark incident my Mother’s words were “It was an act of God”. Norman was bad but a brother I shall never forget.
The subject of Norman and his tragic death was never raised again. 'We don't talk about it'.
Tuesday, September 3, 2024
Trove Tuesday
I have recently been researching articles about my family in the newspapers, using the wonderful free Trove website to search historic Australian newspapers. Over the years I have unearthed a number of fascinating articles and notices that have greatly enriched my research.
A recent find is the photograph below of the marriage of my great uncle Henry Montgomery Clark, published on page 18 of The Australasian on Saturday 19 January 1944.
The article is especially precious as I have few photographs of Henry, or of his brother Leonard who is also featured. A wonderful find!