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