52 Weeks of Genealogy – Week 6 - Land Records

Yes, I'm out of order but now I have caught up with Shauna it is time to go back and cover the first few topics I missed, so having just studied Week 15's certificates I am now back to Week 6 and land records.
The major national and state archives in Australia and New Zealand are:

• Archives New Zealand
• National Archives of Australia
• Queensland State Archives
• State Record Office New South Wales
• Public Record Office Victoria
• Tasmania Archive and Heritage Office
• State Records Office South Australia
• State Records Office Western Australia
• Northern Territory Archives Service
• Territory Records Office 

 My Great Great Grandfather David Mulholland was one of the early settlers around Eurobin, near Bright, and the land records have a lot to tell me about his life in the area.  He came to Australia from Ireland as a young man and worked hard to build a life for himself and his family.  He purchased several parcels of land which were eventually inherited by two of his sons and the land records give me details of the price of the land, the terrain it covered, how it was used and the improvements made over time. 
Land records are a frequently overlooked resource so check to see if they have anything to offer you.

Childrens Homes

A new website has launched this week in the UK called Children’s Homes. It is dedicated to providing historical information on the various institutions that provided homes for children in Britain. This includes orphanages, reformatories, workhouses, poor homes, etc. The website is run by Peter Higginbotham, who also created the website 'The Workhouse'. At the moment, there does not appear to be any actual records uploaded to the website but it does include research suggestions and links which may prove useful to those trying to trace a child.
The site's welcome message states "The Children's Homes website aims to provide information on all of the many and varied institutions that — for whatever reason — became home for thousands of children and young people in Britain. They include a wide variety of establishments ranging from orphanages, homes for those in poverty, and children with special needs, through to reformatories, industrial and approved schools, training ships, and hostels."
The site includes a brief history of children's welfare in the UK, information on the different types of children's homes which existed, the ability to search by institution type or location, and more.

52 Weeks of Genealogy - Week 15 - Civil Registration and Certificates

We are now up to Week 15 of Shauna Hicks's 52 Weeks of Genealogical Records, and I am finally catching up.  Of course, this means I need to go back and fill in the first few topics I missed because I started late! 
Introducing the topic, Shauna tells us that the introduction of civil registration of births, deaths and marriages was a real plus for family history as certificates can give us those vital clues for moving back through the generations. Of course dates when registration was introduced and standard information on certificates varies from country to country but we really cannot confirm our research without these documents.
Birth certificates give us information on the parents and where they were from, marriage certificates also give us information on the parents and death certificates are particularly useful for telling us how long someone was in the colony or state if they an immigrant. 
Unfortunately certificates vary in detail and authority, especially death certificates.  Birth and marriage certificates are usually more reliable as the information they contain was supplied by the people concerned (although if they had something to hide they may have stretched the truth), but who supplied the information you find on a death certificate??  Having recently lost my father, I was the family member who filled in many of the details about his life (I'm fairly certain I got it all correct).  This got me thinking about who may have supplied the information on the older death certificates I have - the only thing you can be certain of is that it was not the person most concerned!  Was the informant their spouse, their sibling, their child?  Or an officiating doctor who had never met the deceased before assisted by nosy Mabel from across the road?  I have a few very disappointing death certificates with little or no information about the person's background, and one I know for certain contains totally incorrect information, which sent me off on quite a wild goose chase.
The cost of certificates can be expensive but digital images are often cheaper so make sure you look at what options are available.  Don't let the cost deter you from a valuable potential source of information.
If you have a brick wall then certificates may be very useful. Try looking at certificates for siblings if you cannot track a direct ancestor.  Find names of children on a death certificate.  Check the witnesses on a marriage certificate as they may be family members - if not parents then aunts and uncles, cousins, siblings.  Check if timelines and places fit with known family movements, see if occupations follow through families and generations. 
Thanks Shauna - this week's topic has sent me back to look at some of my certificates again to see if there is any details I have missed.

52 Weeks of Genealogy - Week 14 - Cemetery Records

Cemetery records are our topic for Week 14 and Shauna says they have to be one of her favourite genealogical records, and they are ones where I have had some fun researching too. There are two kinds of records to look for – burial records and headstones - don't forget to check for both.
Headstones can give additional information that may not be found elsewhere. Sometimes there might be a year or exact date of birth, or the place where they were born, or there may other family members on the tombstone, nicknames or perhaps even a masonic symbol.
Shauna also reminds us that in our global world we should not dismiss overseas websites "as anyone can contribute to free data sites such as Find A Grave. If you add some of your own family information, you may make contact with someone else researching the same family. Also the major subscription databases also have burial and transcription information. I am sure everyone has their own success stories with burial records and headstone transcriptions but is it time to relook at your research and see what is new?"
I have links to quite a few cemetery sites on my genealogy pages and have also visited the cemeteries where the graves of several relatives are located, and have found some fascinating information on headstones.
Visit Shaun's blog on Cemetery Records to read her full entry on this topic.

52 Weeks of Genealogy - Week 13 - Personal Names and Surnames

Shauna has chosen Personal Names and Surnames as her topic for Week 13.  Her blog advises us to have a look at the given or personal names in your family tree. Are there any unusual ones or names handed down through the generations? What about unusual surnames? Why not investigate the origins and history of the names and learn more about the times in which they lived?  If you have a really unusual surname then it may be useful to have a look at the Guild of One Name Studies. There are over 2,600 people researching over 8,400 surnames and their variations.
Looking back through my family tree, I quickly notice a number of given names that occur again and again through the generations, and even within one family.  In my Green family a few generations back I have three Isaacs in one generation - the first two died young and the name was reused for the next son each time.  Eventually persistance paid off and the third Isaac Green in that family lived well into his 90's.  His father was named Isaac as well, and the name crops up in several other generations.  In my mother's Pummeroy family William and Alfred are popular, and recur several time across the generations.  This can create an additional challenge in making sure any information I find is linked to the correct person - I have a newspaper article from Trove that mentions William Pummeroy - and I have four of them alive at the time that the article could be referring to!
The Pummeroy surname itself is quite unusual, especially our Australian spelling which occurs nowhere else.  I have spoken to other Pomeroy / Pomroy families that link to ours back in England (there is also a One Name Study group for the Pomeroy name) but our spelling is unique!  So any other Pummeroys out there - please contact me.  My mother's family surnames also includes Beseler - a nice unusual name which comes from Germany - and more common names like Clark and Mulholland.  On my father's side the surnames are more traditional - Green, Argent, Pike and Hart are my great-grandparent's surnames.
Visit Shaun's blog on Personal Names and Surnames to read her full entry on this topic.

Integrated Census Microdata

"The Integrated Census Microdata (I-CeM) project was a three-year programme which has produced a standardised, integrated dataset of most of the censuses of Great Britain for the period 1851 to 1911.
By making available to academic researchers the detailed information about everyone resident in this country collected at each decennial census from 1851 to 1911, the I-CeM project has transformed the research landscape for work in the economic, social, and demographic history of this country during a period of profound change in the wake of the industrial revolution."
This statement comes from the main I-CeM introduction at the University of Essex.   The project allows users to obtain statistical information from the censuses from England and Wales from 1851-1861 and 1881-1911, and Scotland from 1851-1901 (no, I don't know why England and Wales are missing the 1871 census).  The project is outlined at http://www.essex.ac.uk/history/research/icem/default.htm whilst the database itself is accessible at http://icem.data-archive.ac.uk/#step1.  There is also a detailed user guide is available at http://www.essex.ac.uk/history/research/ICeM/documents/icem_guide.pdf

Thanks to Chris Paton for bringing this new database to light on his British Genes blog.

British Pathe

British Pathe is a collection of news, news film and movies spanning the years from 1896 to 1976,  not only from Britain, but from around the globe. Amongst the 90,000 films that British Pathé have put online (of which 85,000 are newly uploaded) you’ll find coronations, sports activities, fashions of the day, interviews with celebrities, the Royal Family, the Titanic, the destruction of the Hindenburg, British pastimes, gardens, military, parades, travel, culture and 1000s more. Their WW1 Definitive Collection alone contains over 1000 films, which even includes a bunch of films with the Australian and New Zealand military personnel.
Pathé News was founded by Charles Pathe, a producer of newsreels, cinemagazines, and documentaries from 1910 until 1970 in the United Kingdom, as well as being a pioneer of moving pictures in the silent era. The Pathé News archive changed its name a few times over the years, but is now known “British Pathé”.
Viewable on the British  Pathé website you can search by keyword, or you can browse through their categories:
- Entertainment & Humour
- Fashion & Music
- Historical Figures & Celebrities
- Lifestyle & Culture
- Religion & Politics
- Science & Technology
- Sport & Leisure
- Trade & Industry
- Travel & Exploration
- War & Revolution