The June issue of Ireland's Genealogical Gazette, published free online monthly by the Genealogical Society of Ireland, is out now.
The theme for #52Ancestors this week is "Health", and this has had me looking back in my records not only for information on the physical health of my ancestors but also their mental health. Over the years of my research I have discovered several ancestors who spent time in institutions such as workhouses, orphanages and lunatic asylums. Two of my Great Great grandfathers died in lunatic asylums, both from what we understand today to be some form of dementia.
For many
families, caring for an elderly relative, especially one who had
developed dementia, was simply not possible, and before the rise of
affordable nursing homes and old age care there were few places where
the elderly could be cared for. In times when dementia was little
understood and any kind of mental illness carried a weight of social
stigma for the family as well as the sufferer, hiding the person away in
an institution was a frequent solution. Others, unable to care for
themselves because of their deteriorating mental and physical state, were arrested
for various reasons and ended up before the courts. Many were committed to the
lunatic asylums, spending their declining years in conditions that today
we would consider inhumane and totally unacceptable.
A number of these records are now online. Did your ancestor spend time in an asylum in Victoria, Australia? You may be able to access their records through Ancestry and the Public Records Office of Victoria.
Information on Ancestry includes: Victorian Asylum Records between 1853-1940 from the Public Record Office Victoria. The following information will typically be found:
If your ancestor died in a Victorian lunatic asylum, there will also be an inquest into their death. The inquest records relate to deaths that occurred when a person died suddenly, was killed, died whilst in prison, drowned, died whilst a patient in an asylum, or was an infant ward of the state and died under suspicious circumstances, among other circumstances. These are available online at the PROV. Inquest records up to the year 1937 have been digitised and can be viewed online. Inquest records from 1938 onwards are not digitised and can only be viewed in the reading room after you place an order.
The content of the records varies over time. Each file may contain:
Edward Beseler was one of my great great grandfathers, and this was to be his fate.
Edward Beseler was born in 1836 in Neubukow, Germany and emigrated to Australia as a child with his parents and 4 siblings. The family arrived in Adelaide in 1847 on the ship Pauline, living in South Australia for several years before traveling to Victoria, settling on a farm in Ercildown.
Edward was naturalised as an Australian citizen in 1863, and married Emma Flower in 1865. Emma was born 19 September 1841 in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales and died 1 August 1882 in Donald, Victoria. Together the couple had 10 children.
By 1900, Edward was in his 60s and showing signs
of dementia. Matters came to a head in 1909 when he appeared in court
(see report below) on the charge of having insufficient means of
support, was found to be insane and an order of commitment was made.
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| From the Ballarat Star, 4 February 1909 |
Episode 6 of Series 3 of the Really Useful Podcast is out now! The episode is titles 'Proof is Essential' and discusses the importance of proof and using good methodology in your family history research.
The episode is described on the web page :
Joe is joined by Karen Cummings, professional family historian and Managing Director at Pharos Tutors, Sophie Kay, professional genealogist at Khronicle and the Ancestry and Genealogy Expert for Time Team and Phil Isherwood, genealogist speaker and writer who runs the methodology blog ‘Seeing the Wood for the Trees’.
Proof is critical when building our family trees. We must use good methodology to gather evidence to prove our family history. Our guests discuss the importance of proof to family history research and offer some advice.
If you are looking to order civil registration records from the General Register Office (GRO), be aware they have increased the price of their records.
The GRO, which holds civil birth, marriage and death records for England and Wales, holds records from 1837, when civil registration was introduced.
Previously, the prices were:
The new prices are:
Edition 26 of Australian history and genealogy magazine Traces is now available free online for Campaspe Library members via our subscription to Libby eMagazines.
This week's theme #52Ancestors is 'Creativity', which has me thinking about all the creative ways we can record and display our family history, and how creative we often need to be to break down the brick walls in our research.
Even with something as basic as a name, we often need to be creative in our research. From church records to birth, marriage and death
registrations, census records to electoral rolls and passenger lists to
immigration and naturalization records, many of our favourite sources for
family information have been captured with a variety of spellings, handwritings, and
abbreviations. As those historical collections have been digitized and
transcribed, modern day technicians have struggled to correctly interpret and
preserve an entry from long ago, and subsequently we as researchers must be creative to find them.
If there is one thing I have learnt in my years of researching my family, it is
that NO surname, however simple, will EVER be recorded with the same spelling
all the time. When researching, we need to be creative and consider how a name may have been
misspelled or incorrectly recorded. Remember that the clerk creating the record spelled the name the way he felt
like spelling it - how it sounded to him at the time. And frequently he
got it wrong. Sometimes he got it spectacularly wrong!
Abbreviations can also complicate research - William was often abbreviated as
Wm, Thomas as Thos or Tom, Patrick as Pat or Patk or Patr, Daniel as Dan or
Danl or Danny, Margaret as Maggie, Elizabeth as Beth or Eliza. When
searching for an ancestor, be mindful that an exact search for a given name may
unintentionally hide an ancestor from view if the original record or
transcription used an abbreviation.
In addition to alternate spellings and abbreviations, another source of
name
variations comes from errors made during the transcription process. As
people transcribe family history records, they seek to preserve content
exactly
as it appears in the historical original. Despite best efforts, errors
do
occur and names can be unintentionally altered. Consider how old
handwriting may be misinterpreted - both by you and by earlier
transcribers or indexers.
Some databases are quite flexible in regards to spelling variations when
searching, but they will never cover every possible error and sometimes several
searches are necessary to locate an elusive record. Remember to be
creative and keep digging - you never know what you might find - or how it may
be spelled!
