Family Tree UK Magazine

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

Inside this month's issue : 

• Papal dispensations marriage database
• MI5: Official Secrets – exhibition & talks
• ‘Reframing roots’: can family history hold the key to a happier life?
• Rare Second World War trade directories go online
• Free online treasure trove of Scottish history
• DNA news
• RootsTech round-up: coming soon
• Beatrix Potter dollshouse restored & on display
• New FamilyTreeDNA Mitotree
• Illegitimacy on the record
• How to guide: perfect pictures for your Family History
• Mother's secret : The Tale of Abandoned Twins & a New Life
• And more...
  

Week 11 (Mar. 12-18) Brick Wall

We all have those gaps in our research, when we have progressed as far as we can and are searching for those elusive facts that will allow us to progress further.   We have hit a brick wall.

A notable brick wall in my tree starts with my great great grandparents David Mulholland and Eliza (McCrae), the first of my Irish ancestors to arrive in Australia.

David Mulholland died in Eurobin, Victoria, Australia on 10 April 1902 at the age of approximately 70.  He left behind wife Eliza Jane (McCrae) - although I have never found a marriage record for the couple - and 7 surviving children.  Death notices describe David as being 71 years of age and a colonist of 42 years, putting his birth at around 1831 and his arrival in Australia around 1860.  David's death certificate states his parents names as David Mulholland and Margaret (McGee)

Eliza - or Elizabeth, survived her husband for 23 years, dying 28 October 1925 in Eurobin.  Her obituary, published in the Albury Banner and Wodonga Express on 6 November 1925, describes Eliza as having "reached the advanced age of 85 years, 63 years of which were spent at Eurobin" and states that she was born in County Belfast, Ireland.  This puts her birth at around 1840 and her arrival in Australia around 1862.  Eliza's death certificate - under the name Eliza Mulholland - gives her parents names as James McCrae and Mary.

I have, thus far, found no records for either family in Ireland.  Neither have I found a marriage record for David and Eliza in Australia or Ireland.  I will keep looking, however, in the hopes of breaking through the brick wall and continuing further back along my Irish ancestry.

Website Wednesday - The Ryerson Index

The Ryerson Index is a free index to death notices appearing in Australian newspapers. The date range covered extends from the Sydney Gazette of 1803 up to newspapers published within the last week or so. The Index also includes many funeral notices, and some probate notices and obituaries.

In 2020, Ryerson made the decision to commence indexing notices from Funeral Directors' websites in response to the mass closures of regional newspapers which occured in the second quarter of the year.

The Index was originally created by the Sydney Dead Persons Society, so its strength lies in notices from NSW papers - including in excess of two million notices from the Sydney Morning Herald alone. However, the representation from sources in other states continues to grow, with additional papers and funeral directors being regularly added, so that the Index can now truly be considered an Australian index.  Today the Ryerson Index contains 9,604,544 notices from 497 different Australian newspapers, publisher websites and funeral director websites.

Indexing is being continuously carried out by a team of volunteers who give freely of their time to ensure the site continues to grow. Site updates generally occur weekly creating a wonderful resource not purely for Family History researchers. 

While the actual notice is not digitised, information includes :

Name

Notice Type (Death, Funeral, Probate) 

Date of Event 

Event Type (Death, Funeral, Cremation, Publication) 

Age (if available)

Other Details (late of...)

Publication

Date Published

English Will and Probate Records

Probate is the process of dealing with the property, money and possessions of a person who has died, usually laid out in their will. Probate records are a useful resource for family history because you can use them to confirm when your ancestor died and trace other members of their family who are named as heirs in their will. They can even provide you with a picture of your ancestor's life by showing how much property and money they owned, or reveal long-hidden family dramas such as relatives who were cut out of the will. 

Until the middle of the 19th century, the process of handling probate through proving wills or granting administrations came from church courts such as the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. But from 12 January 1858 a civil Court of Probate for England and Wales was established, with the Principal Registry in London and numerous other district registries. The district registries sent copies of all Grants of Probate, and all wills associated with them, and all Grants of Letters of Administration to the Principal Registry where annual centralised indexes were prepared. These are known as the Probate Calendars, and are now all available to search online.

The Probate Calendars include those who left a will and those died intestate (with no will) but with an estate that had to be administered. Records that say 'Probate', 'Grant and Will', ‘Administration (Admon) with Will’ or just 'Will' refer to records where a will existed and was provided. Records that just say 'Administration' or ‘Administration or Grant’ refer to people who died intestate and for whom there is no will.

The arrangement and content of the Calendars has changed over time. Within the annual volumes, with names arranged alphabetically, wills and administrations are listed separately from 1858 to 1870. A single sequence starts in 1871. Note that the Calendars are arranged by date of probate, not date of death. Although probate was usually completed soon after the death there could be considerable delay, sometimes decades or longer.

For probate records from 1858 to 1891 you could get: the name of the deceased; their address and occupation (or “wife of”, “widow of” or “spinster” in the case of a woman); date and place of death; names, occupations and addresses of executors and their relationship (if any) to the deceased; and date of probate and name of the Registry. From 1892 to 1957, the probate records don't contain the address or relationship of the executors; and from 1959 to 1967 no details of husbands are included. More modern probate records include only the name, address and date of death of the testator, together with the date and place of the grant.

You can currently order probate records from the government’s Find a Will website for just £1.50 each.

To search for probate records, go to the website. There are three options to choose from: Wills and Probate 1858–1995; Wills and Probate 1996 to present (new probate records appear online approximately 14 days after the grant of representation has been issued); and Soldier’s Wills (1850–1986). Then enter the surname of the person you are searching and their year of death.  If necessary, use the 'Advanced Search' page with the option to enter more information to further narrow down the search results.

You will then be shown a page of search results, which will enable you to click through to the probate calendar with the deceased individual's record on it. Note that some wills are difficult to search for following an upgrade to the website. To make it easier, you may have to use wildcards or change your use of quotation marks, spaces or other symbols in the search box. You may have to click through multiple pages of results.  Then follow the prompts to add the will to your basket to purchase a copy.

Who Do YouThing You Are Magazine

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 :  

• Get more from maps How to find historic maps online
• Female ancestors The five key records for tracing women's lives
• Blindness The lives of our blind ancestors
• POWs How to find their records online
• Royal and aristocratic ancestors Trace your connection
• Around Britain Northern Irish research
• And more....
  

Week 10 (Mar. 5-11) Siblings

I have blogged several times before about my father and his siblings. Dad was one of 10 children born between 1908 and 1928.  As the second youngest of the Green children, Dad's oldest brothers and sisters left home while he was still quite young - his oldest sisters Isobel and Phyllis both married in 1934 when Dad was just 8 years old.

To the best of my knowledge the photo below is the only photo of all 10 siblings together, which makes the scanned image I have even more precious.  And yes, one of the brothers does have 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!

Given the spread of ages amongst the siblings, added to the fact that Dad was 44 years old when I was born, the spread of ages amongst the cousins is quite large - my oldest cousin on Dad's side is 35 years my senior!

On my mother's side of the family, my grandmother Gladys Pummeroy (nee Clark) was one of 12 siblings, plus 2 half siblings from her father's first marriage.  Among my treasured photos are a pair dating from 1947 of the Clark siblings.

Divided into the male and female sides, my mother is 5 years old and standing at the front of the group, with my grandmother Gladys on her right and Great-Grandmother Pricilla on her left.

The male group, again featuring matriarch Pricilla, has my grandfather William standing directly behind.  For many of my aunts and uncles, these are the only images I have of them, so they are precious to me indeed.

Having only a single sibling myself, I find the idea of such large families quite different, although as I travel back up my family tree there are many such groups of siblings.

RootsTech 2025

Rootstech 2025 has begun!  Running 6-8 March this wonderful conference is available free online.

 

 

The online event includes :

• 200+ new online sessions in over 26 languages
• Join keynote sessions live from the comfort of your own home
• Chat online with other attendees worldwide
• Get digital syllabi and class handouts

Many of the online sessions are presented live, with recordings available for approximately 3 years afterwards.  You can even create your own playlists so you don't miss any of the sessions that interest you.

Presenters for Rootstech 2025 include : Nick Barratt, Diahan Southard, Judy Russell, Rebecca Whitman Koford, David Allen Lambert, Barbara Ferreira, Dr Wanda Wyporska, Steve Little and Hugo Edgardo de Giorgio.

You can search the schedule and build your own playlist of the sessions you want to view, making sure you don't miss out on anything.  Remember, recordings of the online sessions remain available after the event, so you can view all you want at your leisure.  And it is all free!

Famiy Tree US Magazine

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 :

• 25 Years of Family Tree
• Internet Archive loses copyright case
• American Ancestors : open to the public 
• New RootsTech Sessions
• Changes to Find My Past subs 
• Saving the Stories of the Past
• The Health and Social Benefits of Family Memories 
• Back in Time
• Which big genealogy website is the best for you? 
• US Census Checklist
• Delve into your Swedish heritage with five key records.
• The Feminine Mystique • Rediscover the lives of the women in your family tree
• Divorce Records
• Searching Griffith’s Valuation
• Understanding & Researching Family Names 
• And more...

Website Wednesday - Prisoners of the First World War

Millions of First World War prisoner records held by the International Committee of the Red Cross have been uploaded to the web for the first time.

Available for free through a new web portal, the vast collection provides details of people who were held in prisoner of war camps across Europe between 1914-1918.
Created by their captors, the records were submitted to the International Prisoners-of-War Agency, which was set up by the ICRC at the start of the conflict to help restore contact between prisoners and their families at home.
Researchers will generally be able to locate an index card for each individual, providing basic details about their imprisonment and reference numbers for any related documents held elsewhere in the database.
Cards containing tracing requests made by prisoners’ next of kin can also be consulted.
Although all civilian-internee index cards from the ICRC’s archives in Switzerland are now online, roughly 20 per cent of the cards for military prisoners from Belgium, France, the UK and Germany are yet to be digitised.
According to the organisation, the missing records will be steadily uploaded over the next six months, with approximately 5 million index cards representing 2.5 million prisoners of the war available through website by the end of 2014.

In addition, the ICRC has also uploaded a large collection of historic postcards and reports on the conditions in which internees were being held at camps across Europe, Egypt, India, Russia and Japan.

Week 9 (Feb. 26-Mar. 4) Family Secret

Every family has its family secrets.  Some are simply never spoken about, others are handed down in family stories that often change and evolve over time.

One such family story which always fascinated me was the tale of a scandal involving my paternal great grandparents, Walter Proctor Green and Isabella Mary (nee Argent).  The story revolved around an affair allegedly conducted by Isabella with a neighbor while her husband Walter was overseas in America.

While searching old newspapers online, I uncovered a whole saga that played out in the press.

Walter took newspaper editor Ernest Brown 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

Clearly this family secret was not so secret after all!

Website Wednesday - Populations Past

The website Populations Past allows users to create and view maps of different demographic measures and related socio-economic indicators every 10 years between 1851 and 1911. These include fertility, childhood mortality, marriage, migration status, household compositions, age-structure, occupational status and population density. Brief explanations of each measure are included, indicating how they are calculated and explaining how they relate to other measures. Users can zoom in to a particular area on the map, and compare side by side maps of different times or measures. When large areas are viewed at once the data are displayed in Registration Districts (RDs), but the display changes to Registration Sub-Districts (RSDs) when the users are zoomed in. 

The Resources tab on the website contains a handy User Guide, as well as several podcasts of interviews with census experts created in partnership with Year 8 students from South Wales, resources for teachers, an image gallery and a number of links to online National RSD Maps.

The website is hosted by the University of Cambridge and Populations Past and its associated research project, An Atlas of Victorian Fertility Decline, have been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Isaac Newton Trust (Cambridge).

Famiy Tree UK Magazine

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

Inside this month's issue :  

• Ministry of Justice Scraps Plans to Destroy Original Wills
• Newly available 1939 Register details
• Storied acquires AI company
• RootsTech 2025: Discover. 6-8 March
• HistoryScapes: storytelling app from the National Trust
• DNA news 
• All things Welsh for the family historian 
• Making the most of the GRO indexes
• Researching your ancestors who were overseas
• How DNA helps the piecing together of clues
• Your mini guide to the 1921 census
• And more...
  

Week 8 (Feb. 19-25) Migration

The prompt for this week is 'Migration', which tends to make me think of the origins of my family in Australia, and why my ancestors made the momentous decision to leave their homelands and families and make the journey to Australia.

Migration is an area in which I have always had difficulty finding information, and several branches of my family seem to have swum their way to Australia.  Why can shipping records be so problematic?  Over the years, I have found a number of issues with shipping and immigration records.

Firstly, I need to consider alternate spelling of the passenger’s name.  These were times when literacy levels were low, and often our ancestors were not the ones who actually recorded their name.  It was the officials – the secretary, clerk, shipping or immigration official, etc who filled in the records, and they frequently wouldn’t stop to ask about spelling, or even check they had heard a name correctly.  Some people also used as alias for a variety of reasons, making their records difficult – or impossible – to find.

If the person travelled in steerage/was an unassisted immigrant/was a crew member who jumped ship, the details recorded about them may be scant or non-existent.  Females, children, servants and steerage passengers were frequently left off the passenger lists altogether.  It is also worth noting that prior to 1852, ship's masters were not required to record the names of unassisted passengers travelling from Britain to the Australian colonies.

For my own research, it was important to consider if my ancestors migrated in stages.  Not everyone went straight from A to B – some visited other points along the way, sometimes taking years to arrive at their final destination.

One such example was the family of my great grandfather, James Nicholas Clark, who was born in Bristol, England or possibly Launceston, Tasmania around 1856, just as the family emigrated to Australia.  James’s younger sister Annie Amelia Clark was born 31 March 1857 in Port Sorrell, Tasmania, where the family lived for at least 12 years before they crossed Bass Strait and settled in Victoria.  I searched in vain for their immigration records for years before I discovered they began their lives in Australia in the state of Tasmania.  I had been searching for their immigration records in the wrong state.

Then there is my German branch of the family tree.  Carl Friedrich Beseler, known in Australia as Frederick, was born around 1810 in Hanover, Germany.  He was a shoemaker in Germany and a farmer in Australia, arriving in Adelaide on 1 April 1848 on the ship Pauline from Bremen, Germany.  Passengers listed were Frederick Beseler, Shoemaker, Mrs Beseler and 5 children.  The family lived in South Australia for 7 years before travelling overland to Victoria, where they settled near Ercildown.  Several members of the family are buried in Learmonth Cemetery. 

I would like to know what prompted these families, with young children in tow, to pack up and move halfway around the world, settle in one state of Australia, then pack up and move again several years later. For whatever their reasons, my original Australian immigrant ancestors made a huge leap of faith to leave their homelands and travel to a distant country, most with little chance of returning to their homeland if their new lives proved less than they hoped.

Website Wednesday - The Ironclad Sisterhood

The Ironclad Sisterhood was launched by the Society of Australian Genealogists in 2023, based on the original research into the lives of convict women by society member Jess Hill. 

Jess Hill was a member and volunteer of the Society of Australian Genealogists from 1964 until her death in 1995. During her time at the Society, Miss Hill worked as a Honorary Library Research Assistant, helping others find ancestors, solve long-held mysteries, and uncover lost details about individuals across the ages. In 1970, she began to collect biographies of women convicts transported to Australia from 1788 to 1818.

She began this work in 1970 – an unusually early time to begin investigating convict ancestors, particularly women convicts. Miss Hill joined a small coterie of passionate Australian historians who demanded that women’s history be taken seriously, and women be understood as historical agents in their own right.

In 2021 Miss Hill’s work was rediscovered and the Ironclad Sisterhood project was launched with hopes to further Miss Hill’s research agenda and build a searchable database of convict women filled with biographical details pulled from multiple different sources.

So if you have female convicts in your family history, or simply want to know more about the lives of the women convicts who helped build the colony of Australia, check out the website and see what it has to offer.

Week 7 (Feb. 12-18) Letters & Diaries

Did you know that the Australian War Memorial contains and preserves a number of Unit and Commander's War Diaries?  These can be fascinating reading when researching a family member's war service and provide detail into the nature of their service.

While on active service army headquarters, formations, and units are required to keep war diaries recording their daily activities. The purpose of the diaries is twofold: to provide data on which future improvements in training, equipment, organisation, and administration can be based; and to provide future historians with a record of activities of units and formations in operational periods. 

The war diaries generally consist of war diary or intelligence summary sheets located at the beginning of each diary. The sheets record the date of each entry, the unit’s location, a summary of events, and any remarks or references to appendices. The appendices, which make up the larger part of each diary, may include:

• Strength and casualty returns
• Routine orders and administrative instructions
• Operation orders and instructions
• Reports
• Messages
• Location statements
• Intelligence summaries
• Photographs, sketches, maps, and traces

The war diaries vary greatly in the amount and level of detailed information they contain. Their quality generally reflects the skill, dedication, and enthusiasm of the officers in charge of compiling them. They are a historical record of a unit’s administration, operations, and activities, and rarely record information about individual personnel.

Digitised copies of selected original war diaries recording the daily activities of Australian Army units are available for the following conflicts and Peacekeeping missions:

• First World War
  Australian Imperial Force unit war diaries, 1914-18 War
• Second World War
  2nd AIF (Australian Imperial Force) and CMF (Citizen Military Forces) unit war diaries, 1939-45 War
• Korean War
  Australian Army unit war diaries, Korea
• Korean War Unit diaries
  Korean War Unit Diaries - British Infantry Brigades and Commonwealth Division Headquarters
• South East Asian Conflicts
  Australian Army commanders' diaries
• Australian Contingent ASC - United Nations Transitional Authority Cambodia
  Australian Army commander's diaries 1991-1993

Not all war diaries and commander's diaries held by the Memorial are available online. The Memorial has selectively digitised war diaries from its various collections based on preservation needs and high usage. The remaining diaries may be viewed at the Memorial in the Reading Room.

All the original records presented here are at least 30 years old, many are much older. Some are recorded on thin paper, some have been written in pencil, some are the result of old-fashioned duplication techniques, many are extremely fragile. Consequently, a number of images may be hard to read. The Memorial has attempted to capture the archival integrity of the documents at the point in time at which they were digitised. They have not been altered or enhanced in any way.

Website Wednesday - the Public Records Office of Victoria

As the State’s archival authority Public Record OfficeVictoria holds records created by Victorian government departments and authorities, the State’s courts, municipalities, schools, public hospitals and other public offices.  The records can date from the establishment of the Port Phillip District in the mid 1830s and include information relating to areas of activity managed or regulated by government such as the administration of justice, immigration, health and welfare, land, education, Indigenous communities, planning, transport, and resource management.

Of the 96 linear kilometres of records held by Public Record Office Victoria, only a small percentage is digitised and available to view online.  Many other records can be viewed in person in the PROV Reading Rooms at the Ballarat Archives Centre or the Victorian Archives Centre, North Melbourne.

Digitised records curently available in the Online Collections include:

•      Passenger lists and immigration

•      Wills and probate

•      Education and teachers

•      Health and welfare

•      Koorie Heritage

•      Land and Property

•      Publicans and hotels

•      Prisoners and convicts

•      Divorce, insolvency and other civil court records

•      Early Colonial administration

•      Maps and plans

Digitisation of the PROV’s records is ongoing, with new records and expanded categories appearing regularly. 

New Records On Ancestry

It is always worthwhile checking to see what new records have been added to the database at Ancestry.  Below are some of the recent additions for Australia and the United Kingdom.

Don't forget that you can search the Ancestry database for free at any branch of Campaspe Libraries using our public access PCs or wifi through our subscription to Ancestry Library Edition.

Australia 

• Australia, Telephone Directories, 1913-1959
• Australia, Records of Grants of Probate, 1832-1947 
• Tasmania, Australia, Government Gazettes, 1885-1945 
• Australia, Victoria, Government Gazettes, 1851-1907 
• Australia, Australian Lutheran Publications, 1850-1966
• Tasmania, Australia, Hobart Town Gazettes, 1844-1906 
• Australia, Government Honour Records, 1900-2023 

United Kingdom

• Ballymena, Antrim, Northern Ireland, Headstone Inscriptions, 1671-1996
• 1921 Wales Census
• 1921 Isle of Man Census
• 1921 England Census
• 1921 Channel Islands Census
• Web: United Kingdom, Corps of Military Police Index, 1800-2022
• Teesside, England, Electoral Registers, 1832-1974
• UK, Heraldic Card Index, 1150-1850
• UK and Ireland, Newspapers.com™ Obituary Index, 1800s-current
• UK and Ireland, The Royal National Lifeboat Institution Records, 1824-1989
• Web: Isle Of Man, Wills Index, 1600-1864