Trove Tuesday

It is always a fantastic feeling to find proof of a family story, and this week Trove has given me just that.

My father was fond of telling the story of how, during the 1956 flood, the sheep station 'Para' on which he worked was completely surrounded by water for several months.  Despite the flood, life had to continue, looking after the stock, feeding and shearing, and so on.  With all roads in and out cut, however, there was no way to deliver the wool clip to Wentworth or Mildura for sale.  So, according to my father, the station went 'old school' and hired the paddle steamer Success to ship the wool in.

The attempt almost met with disaster.  At one stage a tow rope broke and the barge almost collided with the Mildura-Wentworth bridge.  It was only at the last moment before impact that a rope was successfully thrown across from the Success to the barge to reestablish control.  My father was involved in loading the wool onto the barge and was one of the hands on board during the trip.  An interesting side note - Dad couldn't swim a stroke.

The article above was printed in the Western Herald on 18 July 1969, and tells of the trip in September 1956 which was likely the last such trip on the Darling, carrying wool from Para Station for sale.

A family story proven!

Churchwardens Accounts of England and Wales

The listings in the Churchwardens' Accounts database feature every known church together with any chapels of ease and private chapels found mentioned in printed books and documents, along with the dedication, diocese, archdeaconry, and deanery of each wherever possible. There is also an indication of the population, taken from the Hearth Tax Returns and an early nineteenth century census. Further information will be added as it is gathered – including bibliographic information for each parish.

The search for surviving churchwardens’ accounts has been carried out by visiting all County Record Offices, Local History Libraries, and a few museums. This includes the Isle of Man and the Isle of Wight but not the Channel Islands although information provided by the Guernsey and Jersey Record Offices is listed in the database. The accounts that have been located, have been examined and each year of survival is listed with, wherever possible, the total expenditure of each year.

Although the main purpose of this website is to give details of original sources, a search has been made for both modern and antiquarian publications with transcripts and extracts from the churchwardens’ accounts. This information is shown on the appropriate parish pages.

A wonderful resource to help locate a significant part of our ancestors' lives.

Week 40 (Sept. 30 - Oct. 6): Least

This week's prompt of 'Least' has required a bit of thought.  What area of my family history do I know the least about?  And why?

The answer would probably have to be immigration records.  It 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.

Did our ancestors migrate 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.  My Clark family, for example, migrated from Bristol, England and settled in St Kilda, Victoria.  I searched for their immigration records in Victoria for years – until, almost by accident, I discovered that they originally arrived in Australia at Launceston, Tasmania.  They lived in the nearby Tasmanian settlement of Port Sorrell for at least 6 years before making the journey across Bass Strait to the mainland and settling in St Kilda.  I had been searching in the wrong state.

Finally, not all records have survived the passage of time and remained legible.  It could be that the records we are seeking simply haven’t survived, or a damaged or faded beyond legibility.

So, for a variety of reasons, immigration records are my least successful are of research.

Trove Tuesday

Death notices, funeral notices and obituaries are among the many useful offerings in the newspaper archive, and whenever I am lucky enough to find such notices they prove a wonderful addition to my records.  Of course not everyone who died had such notices in the papers.  Families had to pay for them, and for many it was beyond their means.  It is always worth checking, however, to see what might be available.

When my great grandfather James Nicholas Clark passed away in 1924 there were two death notices inserted in the newspaper - one from his family and one from the Masonic Lodge of which he was a member. 

Had it not been for this Masonic notice, I would never have known that James was a Mason.  It is also worth noting the spelling error - the heading of the Masonic notice has CLARG, not CLARK.  The family notice also gives me his occupation - Overseer at Brighton City Council, and both notices give his address and the cemetery in which his grave is located.

Populations Past

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 to compare side by side maps of different times or measures. When large areas are viewed the data for England and Wales are displayed in Registration Districts (RDs), but the display changes to Registration Sub-Districts (RSDs) when the users zoom in. Scottish data are only available at RD level, although the team have created smaller subdivisions for the larger cities. The data for the smallest geographical units underlying the maps can be downloaded using an 'export' button.

The website covers England, Wales and Scotland.

Rootstech 2025

Rootstech 2025 has been announced 6-8 March and registrations are now open.

 

 

Once again, the three day event in Utah will be accompanied by a free online event :

• 200+ new online sessions in over 26 languages
• Join keynote sessions live from the comfort of your own home
• Chat online with other attendees worldwide
• Get digital syllabi and class handouts

Many of the online sessions are presented live, with recordings available for approximately 3 years afterwards.  You can even create your own playlists so you don't miss any of the sessions that interest you.

Presenters currently confirmed for Rootstech 2025 include : Nick Barratt, Diahan Southard, Judy Russell, Rebecca Whitman Koford, David Allen Lambert, Barbara Ferreira, Dr Wanda Wyporska, Steve Little and Hugo Edgardo de Giorgio.

So register now for this great free online conference.

Week 39 (Sept. 23-29): Homestead

To me, 'Homestead' conjures up the few memories I have of the sheep station called 'Para' on which I was born.  My father worked there as a stockman for approximately 20 years, and my mother became station cook after their marriage.

Para Homestead

My sister and I were both born during our parents last years at the station.  Just before we reached school age, our family moved to the small town of Moama, where we lived for the rest of my childhood.

Woolshed, clean and ready for shearing

I have only a few clear memories of our time at the station.  I remember the homestead beside the Darling River, the creaking verandahs and gum trees all around. Trailing my father into the old woolshed, the smell of sheep and wool overpowering.

1971 flood, from the back doors of the homestead

My family was resident at the station during the 1971 flood, an event my mother has described to me, during which the road from the homestead to the highway was cut by floodwater for several weeks, isolating us all.

Both my parents were fond of telling stories about their time on the station, which both looked back on with fondness and nostalgia.