Website Wednesday - The Rats of Tobruk Association

This October has seen the 80th anniversary of the establishment of the Victorian Branch of the Rats of Tobruk Association.  The story of the Rats of Tobruk looms large in the Australian memories of World War 2.  The Rats of Tobruk website includes the story of the siege, Honour Roll, Vale Notices and more.  There is a link to an online exhibition and to the Association's online journal.

Around 14,000 Australians were in Tobruk during the siege. After they returned to Australia, the veterans looked for continued comradeship. They wanted to perpetuate the ties created amongst those who were in Tobruk during the siege and to ensure any in need were supported. In 1944, the Rats of Tobruk Association, NSW was established. This was followed by the establishment of the Victorian Branch on 2nd October 1945. From there, other branches and sub-branches were established across Australia. In 1946, a Federal Council was established, which was responsible for coordination of the many branches and sub-branches being established. 

In more recent times, branches and sub-branches have been wound up owing to the small number of surviving veteran members. The only exception has been the Victorian Branch. In 2012, veteran members of the Victorian Branch, decided to open membership to descendants and relatives. Since then many new members have joined the Rats of Tobruk Association Inc (the former Victorian Branch). Membership has grown to over 400 Affiliate Members from across Australia.

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 : 

• Ancestry wins appeal over access to Scottish records
• New digitisation project will put 'Tudor Domesday Book' online
• Welsh Women's Peace Petition exhibition opens
• Migration's rich rewards 
• Your complete guide to family trees 
• Researching a Glaswegian ancesto 
• Convict transportation
• Houses and streets
• National school records 
• And more... 

Week 44 (Oct. 29-Nov. 4) Rural

Earlier #52Weeks (Week 32) the focus was 'Wide Open Spaces' and I wrote about being born on a sheep station called Para and growing up in the country.

Para Homestead

Many of my ancestors lived in rural areas.  My father's family had strong ties to Fordham Hall (also called Manor Farm) in Essex, being tennants at the Hall for several generations.  Although they were not the owners, they were major local landholders and were the gentry of their small community.

Fordham Hall, Essex

 

The Green family of Fordham Hall farmed the land, kept a pack of foxhounds,and took part in many community events.  The article below, from the 'Essex Standard' on Friday 13 October 1837, mentions Isaac Green of Fordham as one of the judges at the annual meeting of the local Agricultural Society.

Week 43 (Oct. 22-28) Urban

While many of my ancestors were farmers and farm labourers, others resided in a much more urban setting.  Tracing their addresses through censuses, directories, newspaper articles and other resources.  As cities grew and industrialisation drew many into urban living, urban ancestors became more and more common.

One ancestor, Christopher Prentice, worked as a Water Bailiff in Ipswich, Suffolk in the late 1700s.  Too early for the census records, much of my knowledge of Christopher's life comes from newspaper articles.

I hadn't known the job of Water Bailiff  was an elected position until I found the article above, which was placed in the Ipswich Journal on Saturday 12 September 1778 thanking those who had elected him to the position for their trust.

Website Wednesday - Old & Interesting

Antique household equipment, furnishings, utensils - housekeeping as part of social history. Domestic life, household management - how people ran their homes and did the daily chores. Yesterday's everyday objects are today's antiques or museum pieces, making us curious about past ways of life.

Old & Interesting takes a look at how these everyday things were used, how people managed their home life - and more.

The site includes a history of laundry - a unique set of pages about laundry methods and tools, including histories of  ironing, washboards,  starch and bluing.

There is a Kitchen Antiques Directory for the best online resources on culinary equipment, cooking and eating tools as well as baking, butter, and other traditional and historic food preparation pages
 

Information on beds and bedding includes featherbeds and bed warmers for comfort, or simple straw mattresses and rustic box beds.
 

There are also one-off pages on topics from brooms to meat screens or hasteners to cleaning with stone and sand.
 

Week 42 (Oct. 15-21) Fire

Fire has the potential to have a devastating impact on family history records.  This has long been evident in the impact the loss of the Dublin Public Records Office on researching Irish ancestors. 

The Battle of the Four Courts, the opening engagement of the Irish Civil War, began on 28 June 1922. National Army forces of the Irish Free State were attempting to drive Anti-Treaty Republicans from the Four Courts, and other locations in Dublin. 

The Anti-Treaty garrison had occupied the Four Courts and the Public Record Office 10 weeks earlier, on the night of Holy Thursday 13 April. The Easter date was significant as it linked their campaign with the Easter Rising of 1916. From April to mid-June 1922 political tensions grew, but there were still some friendly contacts between the two sides. In late June the Free State’s National Army surrounded the entire Four Courts complex. In the early hours of Wednesday 28 June they gave the Anti-Treaty forces an ultimatum – evacuate the building or they would open fire. 

At around 4.45 am, just before sunrise, an artillery gun firing 18 pound shells opened fire on the building, accompanied by machine gun and rifle fire. The battle had begun.

Early in the afternoon of 30 June, after two days of fighting, the Four Courts was shaken by a tremendous explosion. 

This shattered the eastern wall of the Record Treasury of the Public Record Office and threw burning material in among the paper and parchment records. The explosion produced a dramatic pillar of smoke and flung files, books and scrolls high into the air. Scraps and fragments fell on the streets of the city, some even landed in Howth, 10 km away.

The remains of the Record Treasury

 
The old, dry records on the shelves quickly caught fire. The flames destroyed practically all the records in the Treasury. Within a few hours seven centuries of Ireland’s historical records were gone.

Immediately the opposing sides blamed each other for the disaster. More usefully, though, within days the staff of the Public Record Office began rescuing any surviving records from the ruins. These rare, charred documents, called the ‘Salved Records’, were carefully stored for future investigation.

Amazingly, the fire break designed to save the Record Treasury, worked — but in reverse, protecting the administration office at the front from the terrible fire in the Treasury. This saved many catalogues, and books that described and summarised the records, from the flames. 

Along with the Salved Records, these catalogues and summaries were the starting point in rebuilding the lost Irish records.

Website Wednesday - Welsh Newspapers Online

Welsh Newspapers Online is a free online resource from the National Library of Wales where you can discover millions of articles from the Library’s rich collection of historical newspapers.

Welsh Newspapers Online currently lets you search and access over 1,100,000 pages from nearly 120 newspaper publications generally up to 1910. This resource also includes newspaper content that has been digitised by The Welsh Experience of World War One project.

Welsh Newspapers Online is part-funded by the Strategic Capital Investment Fund and the European Regional Development Fund through the Welsh Government.

There is also the companion site Welsh Journals, which gives access to over 1,200,000 pages from over 475 journals published between 1735 and 2006.

While many of the titles included in these databases were printed in English, there are also a number printed in Welsh.