Website Wednesday - Full Text Searching Arrives at FamilySearch

FamilySearch has announced that Full-Text Search is now part of its standard search tools. Since its initial release in FamilySearch Labs during RootsTech 2024, the feature has undergone numerous enhancements to improve its power and usability. 

FamilySearch hosts billions of digitized historical records, but only a fraction are indexed and searchable. Advancements in artificial intelligence and handwriting recognition are making records searchable much faster than ever before.

Full-Text Search uses AI-generated transcripts to search unindexed record collections in seconds. By entering keywords, names, places, and dates, users can now search almost 2 billion genealogically significant records, most of which were previously accessible only as images.

Unlike traditional indexed searches, Full-Text Search scans the entire transcript of a record, allowing users to find matches in any part of the document. This capability is helping thousands of users uncover relatives and evidence about them in records they may never have considered before.

Full-Text Search is now available on FamilySearch.org in the main Search menu under Full Text. Users can also access the tool through the all-collections search on the signed-in FamilySearch home page and in the FamilySearch Catalog.

Several new features have been added since RootsTech 2024:

• AI-generated summaries of records, including names and relationships.
• Search fields for year, place, and image group number (DGS).
• Almost 2 billion records from various countries and languages.
• Ability to search by specific collections, which are grouped using digitization metadata.
• Automatic translation of record summaries into your preferred language.

Week 40 (Oct. 1-7) Cemetery

The theme for Week 40 is 'Cemetery', and the information to be found on tombstones and in cemeteries cannot be discounted.  From visiting cemeteries in person to finding online cemetery records to uncovering photos of headstones, I have had some wonderful finds.  The information found on headstones can be remarkably varied in content, with anything from a simple name to the details of parents, spouse, children and dates and places of birth and death.  Sometimes finding one relative in a cemetery leads to the discovery of several more, with whole generations of family all buried in the same location. 

The photograph above is the Mulholland family plot in Eurobin, Victoria.  The plot includes two main headstones and several plaques.

The main headstone is for my great great grandfather David Mulholland who died 10 April 1902, age 71 and his wife Eliza Jane who died 30 October 1925, age 95.  Also included on the headstone are three infant children - Samuel Thomas, died 28 April 1879, age 3 months ; Margaret died 5 September 1885 age 10 years, and an unnamed infant son who died 26 January 1887 age 10 days.

The second, smaller headstone is 'erected to the memory of the beloved children of David and Jane Mulholland who died at Boggy Creek.'

Sadly, the three children named on the headstone all died as infants within a few weeks of each other - Henry Mulholland, died 29 January 1872 aged 4 years 8 months, Margaret Jane Mulholland who died 2 February 1872 aged 6 years 4 months and Thomas Mulholland who died 14 February 1872 aged 1 year 2 months.  A stark reminder of the perils of childhood and how disease could carry off several family members in rapid succession - all three died of diphtheria.

Website Wednesday - Victoria Government Gazettes

The first issue of the Victoria Government Gazette was published on 9 July 1851. Before then, material about Victoria was published in the New South Wales Government Gazette, the Port Phillip Government Notices and the Port Phillip Government Gazette.

The gazettes are the government's method of notifying the general public of its decisions and activities. They contain information on everything from land transactions, bankruptcies, reward notices and new acts of parliament, to tenders, patent applications, unclaimed letters and monies, shipping and emigration notices, and more.

Gazette entries may be as brief as a road closure notice or as comprehensive as a 200-page list of everyone who is registered to practice medicine in Victoria.

Early issues of the Victoria Government Gazette were published once a week. In the 1850s the frequency increased, and by the turn of the century the gazette was pressed almost daily.

From 1987 onwards, the gazette has been published in three series:

• General – produced weekly
• Periodical – lengthy, non-urgent notices, published irregularly
• Special – published irregularly

The Online Archive runs from 1836 up to 1997.  You can browse the online gazettes by decade, year, month, day and page.

Traces Magazine

Edition 31 of Australian history and genealogy magazine Traces is now available free online for Campaspe Library members via our subscription to Libby eMagazines.

Inside this month's issue:  

• Kutalayna revived
• Ghosts, grifts and spiritualism
• The mystery on Goold Island
• Death in harness
• Is honesty the best policy?
• Hannah Rigby’s last lark
• A Pandora's box of letters
• Your guide to early portrait photography
• Women worth emulating
• ‘Dependable’ cooking from 1924
• Narryna : a Georgian gem

Week 39 (Sept. 24-30) Disappeared

We all have them - the elusive ancestors who have simply disappeared.

Sometimes we are lucky enough to find them again in unexpected places.  Sometimes they reappear after an absence of years - or decades.  Sometimes they remain elusive and are never found again.

People disappear for all manner of reasons.  They move around the country or the world in search of a better life.  They disappear into prisons, asylums or other institutions.  Their names are spelled so badly the connection is difficult to make.  Perhaps they chose to change their name completely as part of a new start.

Migration can be one of those times when our ancestors simply disappear.  Shipping and immigration records can be sketchy at best, and those recording our ancestors were often not terribly concerned with accurate spelling of names. 

For my own research, it was important to consider if my ancestors might have migrated 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.

One such example was the family of my great grandfather, James Nicholas Clark, who was born in Bristol, England or possibly Launceston, Tasmania around 1856, just as the family emigrated to Australia.  James’s younger sister Annie Amelia Clark was born 31 March 1857 in Port Sorrell, Tasmania, where the family lived for at least 12 years before they crossed Bass Strait and settled in Victoria.  I searched in vain for their immigration records for years before I discovered they began their lives in Australia in the state of Tasmania.  I had been searching for their immigration records in the wrong state.  The family 'disappeared'.

Website Wednesday - the Latin Genealogical Word List

As we progress further back with our research, chances increase that we will come across a document written in Latin.  Latin is the language of the Romans. Through the continuing influence of Roman civilization and the use of Latin by the Catholic Church many genealogical resources are written in Latin.

Nearly all Roman Catholic church records used Latin to some extent. Latin was used in the records of most European countries and in the Roman Catholic records of the United States and Canada. Because Latin was used in so many countries, local usage varied. Certain terms were commonly used in some countries but not in others. In addition, the Latin used in British records has more abbreviations than the Latin used in European records. 

Some common genealogical terms include the following :

English	Latin
birth	nati, natus, genitus, natales, ortus, oriundus
burial	sepulti, sepultus, humatus, humatio
christening	baptismi, baptizatus, renatus, plutus, lautus, purgatus, ablutus, lustratio
child	infans, filius/filia, puer, proles
death	mortuus, defunctus, obitus, denatus, decessus, peritus, mors, mortis, obiit, decessit
father	pater
godparent	patrini, levantes, susceptores
godfather	patrinus, compater
godmother	matrina, patrina, commater
husband	maritus, sponsus, conjux, vir
marriage	matrimonium, copulatio, copulati, conjuncti, intronizati, nupti, sponsati, ligati, mariti
marriage banns	banni, proclamationes, denuntiationes
mother	mater
given name	nomen
surname	cognomen
parents	parentes, genitores
wife	uxor, marita, conjux, sponsa, mulier, femina, consors

There are a number of sites online that can help you with translating genealogical records written in Latin.  One such website is the Latin Genealogical Word List.  The website itself also includes links to other sites you may find helpful. 

Family Tree UK Magazine

The latest issue of Family Tree UK magazine is now available free online for Campaspe Library members via our subscription to Libby eMagazines.

Inside this month's issue : 

• New digitised access to Irish newspaper records
• MyHeritage wiki volunteers needed: can you help?
• Trace nearly 200,000 19th-20th century medical ancestors
• Babies in workhouses in Ireland, 1872-1874
• New direction for DNA courses & qualifications
• ‘Was justice served?’ • A new season of Findmypast’s podcast launched August 2025
• Exploring the Pre-1841 Censuses
• Railway lives -  Discovering our ancestors’ work on the tracks
• Thinking of taking a DNA test?
• What are our responsibilities as family historians?
• Treeview - Take the tour 
• ‘Other’ records created by the Crown 
• And more...