Week 26 (June 25-July 1) Favorite Name

The given names of our eighteenth and nineteenth century British ancestors were drawn from a surprisingly small pool.  The four most popular male names were carried by one in every two males, and the top thirteen male names were carried by 87% of the male population.

In the 1700s the top five names for each gender were :
Boys - John, William, Thomas, Richard and James
Girls - Mary, Elizabeth, Ann, Sarah and Jane

In the 1800s the top five names for each gender were :
Boys - John, William, James, George and Charles
Girls - Mary, Anna, Emma, Elizabeth and Margaret

There were, of course, always fads among names - copying that of the current Monarch and their family, for example, or using a traditional name common in your own family, or following popular fads.  Horatio, for example, made a brief surge in popularity after Nelson's victory at Trafalgar.  Similarly, Adolf disappeared from German communities after World War 2.

Then there were also the commonly used spelling variations, abbreviations and diminutives.  For example, if you don’t know that Polly was a diminutive of Mary or that Nellie was a diminutive of Ellen and Eleanor and Helen, you may struggle to find your ancestors’ entries.  Harry for Henry, Bill for William, Fred or Alf for Alfred, Dick for Richard, Charlie or Lottie for Charlotte, Maggie, Meg or Maisie for Margaret.  Elizabeth was another extremely common name with multiple diminutives - Eliza, Liz, Lizzie, Betty, Betsy, Beth, Bessie, Lisbeth, Liza - the list goes on.  

I have one female ancestor, baptised Elizabeth, who was known throughout her life as Betsy.  This was the name she used in census records, her children's birth/baptism records and on her death certificate and burial record.  The only time I can ever find her referred to as Elizabeth is at her baptism.

Family 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 :  

• What's in a (Papal) name?
• Tear down that brick wall
• 23andMe declares bankruptcy
• Budget cuts threaten libraries and archives
• Military Honors
• Best websites
• Signs of life : vital records
• America the beautiful
• Book reports
• Tree tips
• Fraternal records
• Using the FamilySearch Catalogues
• Saving diaries, calendars and planners
• Using record hints
• Organising genelaogy 

Website Wednesday - Families in British India Society

Did your family spend time in India during the time of British rule?   The Families In British India Society (FIBIS) is a self-help organisation devoted to members researching their British India family history and the background against which their ancestors led their lives in India under British rule.

Their database has a number of resources available to search, and recently 15,376 names from the Times of India arrival and departure notices for 1896 have now been uploaded to the FIBIS database website. This batch comprises of 8,023 arrivals and 7,353 departures and brings the total number of arrival and departure notices transcribed by this project to 501,298.

The FIBIS database contains a number of other resources, including bonds, cemeteries and monuments, censuses, civil service records, directories, maritime records, military records, railways, schools and orphanages, and wills and probate.  All are fee to search.

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 our subscription to Libby eMagazines.

Inside this month's issue : 

• Artificial intelligence How AI is transforming genealogy
• First names What your ancestors' forenames can tell you
• The history of driving How cars transformed Britain
• Eureka Moment Lynne Dixon discovered she's related to a pioneering female architect
• The Irish Famine The best websites
• Around Britain Berkshire family history
• And more... 

 

Week 25 (June 18-24) FAN Club

One of my earliest memories as a child is of being allowed to stay up late to watch reruns of the original TV series of Star Trek.  My mother, sister and I were all huge fans, and even my father became involved in our Trekkie obsession. 

For several years mum was a member of the Star Trek fan club Astrex, and I can remember receiving their newsletters in the post and us all sitting down to hear the latest news and read fan stories.  

When the Star Trek films first began with Star Trek : the Motion Picture in 1979, it was a huge treat to go to our local cinema and later to watch the films at home on video and later DVD.

When cleaning out the family home I rediscovered some old copies of Astrex, including several short stories written by mum.  I was also quite surprised to uncover a certificate from the fan club sent to mum for her contributions.

A member of the fan club indeed!

Week 24 (June 11-17) Artistic

This week's prompt is 'Artistic', and to the best of my knowledge there have been no artists in my ancestry.   As a child, however, I learned that my mother had been quite the musician in her youth and had played the guitar with a Melbourne band.

I can remember being fascinated by my mother's guitar - cream coloured with beautiful paintwork - which she usually kept wrapped in a blanket on top of a wardrobe in my parents' bedroom.  Occasionally she would take it down and let me admire it, but I have no memory of ever seeing her play it until I started learning to play myself in my last year of primary school.

I would later discover that mum had auditioned and been shortlisted to play in the backing band for pop due Bill and Boyd after they first came to Australia from New Zealand.  This opportunity was not to be, however, and soon after mum began working as a governess in rural New South Wales, where she met my father.

After marriage and children mum rarely played her guitar again, and it stayed tucked away in storage.  After she passed away in 2015 I rediscovered her guitar, and it came with me to my new home.

Website Wednesday - Arolsen Archives

The Arolsen Archives, formerly known as the International Tracing Service, is a free database that consists of records from Second World War concentration camps, including prisoner cards and death notices.  In total, they contain the names of over 2.2 million victims from across Europe.

The Arolsen Archives are an international center on Nazi persecution with the world’s most comprehensive archive on the victims and survivors of National Socialism. The collection has information on about 17.5 million people and belongs to the UNESCO’s Memory of the World. It contains documents on the various victim groups targeted by the Nazi regime and is an important source of knowledge, especially for younger generations.

To this day, the Arolsen Archives answer inquiries about some 20,000 victims of Nazi persecution every year. For decades, clarifying fates and searching for missing persons were the central tasks of the institution, which was founded by the Allies in 1948 as the “International Tracing Service”.
Research and education are more important than ever to inform today’s society about the Holocaust, concentration camps, forced labor and the consequences of Nazi crimes. The Arolsen Archives are building up a comprehensive online archive so that people all over the world can access the documents and obtain information.

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 : 

• USA pharmaceutical company to buy 23andMe
• Ancestry AI transcription tool beta-launched April 2025
• Scran retiring as Trove.scot steps in
• Family Tree Maker: new version out
• 20,385 new Kerry records at RootsIreland
• DNA Club news
• 105 million new records on MyHeritage
• New Suffolk collections on Findmypast
• Making the most of Ship's Passenger lists
• Untangling the Tonges in the census
• Marriage records in Ireland
• The paths the the 'blended family'
• What can Family Tree software do for you?
• Family Historian 7 take the tour
• An introduction to Medieval Records

 

Website Wednesday - Trade Union Ancestors

The scale of the British trade union movement is astounding. Tens of millions of people have been members, and 5,000 trade unions are known to have existed at one time or another.  The website Trade Union Ancestors can help you locate a specific trade union in time and place with the A to Z index of trade unions and trade union family trees. In addition, you can read about some of the events and people that shaped the trade union movement through 200 years of history in their trade union histories, trade union lives and striking stories.

The historic union records that  survive illuminate the working lives, daily concerns and political attitudes of our ancestors.  Trade Union Ancestors aims to help  family historians to identify the correct union, to discover the role their ancestor played in it, and to find out more about trade union history.

Website editor Mark Crail stresses that the site is far from comprehensive and he cannot guarantee it is mistake-free.  Also, while millions of people have been trade union members over the past couple of centuries, millions more working people were not. At the beginning of the 20th century, just one in ten working people were members. And though masses of union records have survived, much more has been discarded or destroyed down the years.

The site draws material from a range of sources. Among the most fruitful are:

• The first four published volumes of the Historical Directory of Trade Unions. These are a wonderful but incomplete guide to the development of the trade union movement published between 1980 and 1994 by Gower. The first three were compiled by Arthur Marsh and Victoria Ryan, and the fourth by Marsh and Ryan with the help of John Smethurst. Wonderful though they are, the series is incomplete and there are some rather obvious omissions as a result – not least the Transport and General Workers Union. Time has also moved on since they were published, with mergers and amalgamations taking place annually. There is now a fifth and a sixth and final volume available.

• The archive listings published online by Warwick University’s modern records centre. The centre has an unrivalled collection of original trade union papers, including the archives of many long since defunct trade unions deposited by their modern successors.

• A variety of published sources including the potted histories that some unions include on their websites, the books that unions have produced down the years about their origins and developments, and the many general union histories published since Sydney and Beatrice Webb originated the genre with their History of Trade Unionism, first published in 1894 and revised in 1920.

• Government papers and public records – some of them published (such as Labour Market Trends, from which data on this website is extracted) and some stored away in the National Archives waiting for someone with the time and interest in the subject to come along and find them.

Week 23 (June 4-10) Wedding Bells

Wedding Bells frequently lead to some fascinating records and photographs for family historians.  I have been lucky enough to amass quite a collection of family photographs, combining original photos, copied photos, digital photos and slides (any relatives out there please note - I am always happy to swap and share), and these include a number of wedding photos.  I would have to say that my favourite is the wedding photo of my great grandparents James Nicholas Clark and Priscilla Veronica Mulholland.  James and Priscilla married 3 August 1898, almost a year after James's divorce from his first wife Eliza (nee Hawley). 

James Nicholas Clark and Priscilla Veronica Mulholland, 1898

Also acquired from relatives , these from England, were wedding photos of my great aunt Constance Green, daughter of Walter Proctor Green, in 1909.  This was a major event at the family home of Fordham Hall, with a large party attending and the event extensively reported in the local newspapers.  Below is a photograph of the wedding party, taken on the lawn at the rear of the Hall.

Wedding of Constance Boggis Green, 1909

A few years ago I acquired a neat little device that could attach to my computer and scan old negatives and slides, creating nice digital photos and I spent several weekends busily scanning away, hugely expanding my photo cache.  Many I have waved in front of relatives, seeking details of when, where, what and who, and have made notes on each of as much information as I have.  

My parent's wedding day, scanned from a slide.

 

 
Amongst the old slides and negatives I found when clearing our the family home was a box of over 60 slides from my parents wedding in 1968.  Wedding bells indeed. 

Traces Magazine

Edition 31 of Australian history and genealogy magazine Traces is now available free online for Campaspe Library members via our subscription to Libby eMagazines.

Inside this month's issue: 

• Beneath the prison floorboards
• Like melons on a vine
• Danger in the bay
• The one that got away
• What’s that thingamajjig?
• From raw data to human stories
• Hazel and Edna Pritchard Sisters of sport
• Inspiration from 1938
• Tavern tasties
• The hidden history of the Brisbane tram network
• The Australiana Fund’s working collection 
• The objects we cherish

 

Website Wednesday - Irish Registry of Deeds Project

The volunteers of the Irish Registry of Deeds Index Project have been hard at work on the project over the past few months, greatly expanding the work already done.

The purpose of this project is to provide finding aids for the records held at the Registry of Deeds in Dublin. There are three sets of indexes produced by the project:

• The main index is building a name index for the memorial transcription books held at the Registry of Deeds
• The grantors index consists of transcriptions of the Registry of Deeds' grantors indexes
• The townland index consists of transcriptions of the Registry of Deeds' townland indexes

Each of these index databases can be searched on a number of fields. None, of course, is complete. Each has those index entries contributed by the project volunteers.

Since the last update, the free online index has expanded to 629,064 entries and the Townland index has grown to 703,835 entries.

The Grantor Index now had 52,757 records indexed and is continuing to expand.

All the Indexes are free to search.