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

• 18th century family history
  Else Churchill reveals how to take your family tree back to the 1700s
• House history in the 1921 census
  TV’s Deborah Sugg Ryan explains what the 1921 census can reveal about your home
• MyHeritage DNA
  Debbie Kennett on how to make the most of this major DNA company
• Posted in the past
  Caroline Roope on the history of postcards
• Eureka moment
  How Will Mundy discovered he’s related to Shakespeare
• Plus…
  The best websites for school records, how to use Family Historian 7, our guide to Irish Catholic church records and more

An Exciting Find

It is always so exciting to receive a previously unseen document or photograph from a distant relative, and this week I been lucky enough to discover such a gift.  

Charles Cock was the husband of my great grandaunt Sarah Green.  He was born in Totham, Essex about 1812 and died in West Mersea, Essex 14 August 1896.  He and Sarah married in Sarah's home village Fordham, Essex 21 November 1843.

Early photographs of our ancestors are so often rare and precious, and I am extremely happy to have the above photo of Charles.  I don't know exactly when it was taken, although I presume later in his life, and it is possibly cropped from a larger image.

If anyone out there knows more about this photo, I would be delighted to hear from you and am always happy to share information.

#52Ancestors - Week 11 - Flowers

Flowers will always remind me of my father, who was an avid gardener.  There were almost always some kind of flowers blooming in our garden - azaleas, gardenias, chrysanthemums, petunias, and always roses.  Both my parents loved roses, and throughout my childhood there were always some kind of roses planted in our yard.

Roses along the driveway of the family home, c1973

For their 30th wedding anniversary my sister and I gave our parents five standard roses, which my father planted in our back yard.  Through several years of drought and strict watering restrictions, when our lawns died and so many other plants were lost, we carried buckets of water from our bathroom to those roses, keeping them alive.

One of our standard roses thriving in its new yard

After my parents passed away, as I was clearing out the house before it was sold, kind friends helped me dig up those 5 standard roses.  After almost 20 years in the one position in our yard, the roses were transferred into old drums and moved away.  As I settled into my new house, they spent over a year in those drums.  Two of them died shortly after being dug up, a third died later but I managed to get a cutting from it to survive.  The other two have thrived, and now have pride of place in my own yard, where they will hopefully bloom for years to come.

#52Ancestors - Week 10 - Worship

Week 10 of #52Ancestors focuses on Worship.  Religion has played a major role in the lives of our ancestors, and how they chose to worship had the potential to impact their lives in many different ways.  The church, faith and religion were central to the lives of so many, and had the potential to impact where people lived, how they earned a living, who they married, even whether they could own land of work in certain professions.

My 3xGreat grandparents Friedrich (Frederick) Carl and Susetta Beseler made the momentous decision to leave their homeland and emigrate to Australia.  The Beseler family arrived in Adelaide on 1 April 1848 on the ship Pauline, having departed their homeland from the port of Bremen, Germany.  Passengers listed were Frederick Beseler, Shoemaker, Mrs Beseler and 5 children.  The family lived in South Australia for several years before travelling overland to Victoria, settling in the area of Learmonth.

The Beseler Family at Ivy Rock Station

 
Large numbers of Germans emigrated to Australia and the United States, mainly for economic and religious reasons. Many emigrants were of the Lutheran faith.

The Lutheran Church in Australia had begun in 1838 with the arrival of about 500 migrants from Prussia, led by their Pastor, August Kavel. They were sponsored personally by George Fife Angas of the South Australian Company, who had taken pity on their religious plight and the persecution they were facing in Prussia.

The Beseler family working on their farm

The Beselers flourished in Australia.  Frederick Beseler was naturalised as an Australian citizen in 1848, and his son Edward followed in 1963.  They purchased land, married and raised families and integrated into the Australian community.  Seeking freedom to worship and the opportunities to own land offered in Australia paid off for the family, as it did for so many others.

Naturalisation Certificate of Frederick Beseler, 1848

Family Tree Magazine US

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 : 

• Tree Talk - We asked where your family was during the 1940s. Here’s how you responded.
• Fascinating Photo Find - One researcher sees himself as part of an ancestral community in a whole new way.
• Life Begins at ‘40 • Follow your relatives through the 1940s (and up to the soon-to-be-released 1950 census) with these records.
• Out of focus • These 12 underused sources will help you find family photos.
• Find Your U.S. Ancestors
• Old Norse • Over the North Sea and through the fjords—back to Old Norge we go! This guide to Norwegian genealogy will help you trace your kin, Viking or not.
• In the Dark • Age has darkened this tintype, but digital enhancements and clothing clues shed light on its subjects.
• Finding Newspapers with Chronicling America • Chronicling America is a free portal to finding and exploring historical US newspapers. A project of the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the database’s goal is to grant access to newsprint that represents the diverse stories and viewpoints of the American past.
• Saving Recipe Cards
• Surname Variant Chart • If you’re not having luck finding records of your ancestors, consider the possibility that their name was mistranscribed or misindexed in online databases.
• SURNAMES AND ETHNICITY • Every culture has its own naming traditions, and your surname can give you clues about your paternal line’s ancestral origins. 
• And more
  

Populations Past

The new 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).

#52Ancestors - Week 9 - Females

Throughout history, the lives of women have in many ways been dependent on men.  In Britain before 1857 wives were under the economic and legal control of their husbands, and divorce was almost impossible. It required a very expensive private act of Parliament costing perhaps £200, of the sort only the richest could possibly afford.  

Traditionally a female went from the household of her father to that of her husband, and until a series of four laws called the Married Women's Property Act passed Parliament from 1870 to 1882, a wealthy married women usually had no control of their own property and a working class woman's wages were also the property of her husband.

Until more modern times, work opportunities for women were severely limited and many professions were limited to males only.  Few universities allowed women to study, and in the first professions that did allow women, such as teaching, women were paid significantly less that their male counterparts, and were often expected to leave when they married.

This makes tracing our female ancestors especially challenging.  Women were far less likely to leave a variety of records behind - things like land, occupation and trade, voting, education and tax records.  Even when formally mentioned, a married woman would often be referred to by her husband's name - I have a newspaper article from 1930 which refers to a great-aunt as 'Mrs Wilfred Penney', not by her given name of Edna.