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 : 

• Out on a limb
• 5 questions with: Roberta Estes - Blogger, DNAeXplained
• NARA Closes New York Branch
• A new look for Scotland's People
• 2024: The Year of Genealogy Software
• The Soundtrack of Our Lives
• Research Renaissance - Record discoveries inspire a connection to artistic ancestors.
• First Words • Start your next family history writing project with confidence!
• Falling into place - Writing about places.
• Checking the Weather
• Free for all - Discover record riches on FamilySearch.
• Can't-miss tool : Full-Text Search
• Acadian Adventures - Overcome hurdles in Acadian genealogy.
• Accessing Library and Archives Canada
• Saving Political Buttons and Memorabilia
• DNA and Privacy
• U.S. Census records - Tips for Finding, Analyzing & Using Censuses

Week 45 (Nov. 4-Nov. 10): Colorful

The theme for Week 45 is 'Colorful' and I started thinking about all the more colorful ancestors in my tree, and then came across the wonderful hand colored image of my father in his Australian Air Force uniform and promptly became sidetracked. 

This treasure was only discovered when the removalists were loading up my furniture to take to my new house when I sold the old family home back in 2017.  This colored print of my father was taken from a photograph from when he enlisted in the Air Force, during World War 2.  

It is hand colored on cardboard - and had spent who-knows-how-long lying behind a wardrobe in my parents bedroom.  Neither my sister or I can recall ever seeing it, although we are both familiar with the photo from which it is taken (below), and how or when it was created I have no idea.

My next project is to investigate restoring the colored image and having it framed.  I even have the spot for it picked out in my study!

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 : 

• DNA testing 10 tips on how to get more from your results
• British Home Children The story of tracing a missing relative
• Reader story Rachel Chávez’s tree includes scandal, royalty and romance
• First World War medical records How to trace your ancestors
• Recorded sound How new technology changed history
• Around Britain Northamptonshire family history
• And more...
  

Trove Tuesday

As today in Australia we celebrate the running of the Melbourne Cup, it seems fitting that my Trove Tuesday post focuses, in some way, on horses, jockeys and racing.

Locating a photo of an ancestor in the newspapers makes any article even more exciting.  After I discovered that my great uncle, Alfred Edward Pummeroy, worked for a few years as a jockey, I headed to the newspapers to see if he was mentioned in racing news.

To my delight, not only did I find several articles about his short (and not terribly successful) racing career, but I also found a photograph of him with a couple of other jockeys.

Alfred is pictured in the centre of the three standing jockeys, and it is the only image I have of him as a young man, which makes this photo from the newspapers even more special.

Another Trove Treasure!

Week 44 (Oct. 28-Nov. 3): Challenging

The prompt for Week 44 is "Challenging", which pretty much describes most aspects of family history research at times.  How to pick just one area upon which to focus?

One aspect of research I find truly challenging is the amount of misinformation and inaccurate research I find out there.  Incorrectly transcribed records, inaccurate original records, outright lies, and poor research skills can cause all sorts of problems for the unwary.

Online trees on any website I find can be full of errors, many of which are perpetuated by other researchers simply copying the incorrect information without  trying to verify it - even without noticing that the information is impossible!

Some of the impossibilities to keep in mind :

• Children cannot be born before their parents. 
• Children cannot be born to a mother who is 6 years old.  Or 94 years old. 
• Children are highly unlikely to be born to a father who is 89 years old.  While this MAY be biologically possible, it is unlikely and deserves a bit of fact checking.
• A child cannot be christened 4 months before they are born. 
• A woman cannot marry 3 years after she has died.
• A man cannot enlist in the army 5 years after he has died.
• Full siblings cannot be born 4 months apart.
• Travel takes time, especially before the age of the airplane.  In 1883 a child could not be born in England and christened in Australia 5 days later.
  

I have seen all of these, and more, in online family trees.  And trying to contact the tree owner to get their errors corrected?  Challenging indeed! 

Trove Tuesday

Researching Immigration can be difficult for researchers for many reasons.  

Many arrivals into Australian ports were divided into categories.

• “assisted” (subsidised)
• “unassisted” (paying their own way), or
• “coastal” (travelling from another Australian port)

How a person arrived had great influence over the detail available about them.  Assisted immigrants generally owed the government money (or labour) in return for their passage and thus the records for them are usually fairly detailed.

For Unassisted and Coastal passengers, ship's registers frequently lacked detail.  Women, children, servants and steerage passengers were frequently left off passenger lists.  Names might be abbreviated - "J. Smith" or simply "Mr Smith", and children were often simply added as a note - "Mrs Smith and 5 children". 

Newspapers, however, often published shipping news, including lists of passengers as shown in the article below, which reports the arrival of my Beseler family in South Australia on the ship Pauline.

South Australian Register, Sat 1 April 1848

Included in the list of passengers are Frederick Beseler, shoemaker, Mrs Beseler and five children.  The article also notes that the ship had sailed from the port of Bremen, Germany.

Another Trove Treasure.

Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland

The Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland was created through a five-year State-funded program of research entitled ‘Beyond 2022'.  It is funded by the Government of Ireland under Project Ireland 2040 through the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. 

 Led by researchers at Trinity College Dublin, the program "combines historical investigation, archival discovery, conservation and technical innovation to re-imagine and recreate, through digital technologies, the archive lost on June 30th, 1922, in the opening engagement of the Civil War".

Many genealogists with Irish family history have mourned the loss of records that were the result of the Dublin Records Office fire.  Combined with the destruction of the historic Irish censuses, the loss has made the task of researching Irish ancestors more difficult.

The Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland is an open-access resource, freely and permanently available online to all those interested in Ireland’s history at home and abroad. The website states that "our extensive and growing treasury of digitized records—scattered over space and time, but now reunited on-screen—brings ordinary lives buried in official documents back into the light". 

By 2022, over 70 archives, libraries and societies in Ireland, Britain and the United States have formally joined the enterprise to bring the destroyed Record Treasury back to life.