Naval Records on Ancestry

Ancestry has started a new collection of UK naval officers and ratings (non-commissioned seaman) service records for the period from 1802 to 1919. This encompasses the World War I time period. This collection of some 89,000 records consists primarily of pension applications and supporting service records. Officers and ratings were awarded pensions after 20 years of service in the Royal Navy. Typical information includes the name of the sailor, rank or rating, a list of ships and service dates and remarks. Some records also include muster and pay registers. Please note: no service records are listed past 1912. That means you can’t use this collection to find out what ships your ancestors served on in World War I.  Ancestry is a subscription database, but Ancestry Library Edition is free to use in any Campaspe Regional Library branch.

Change to English Marriage Certificates

David Cameron has announced that mothers’ names will be added to marriage certificates in England and Wales. Speaking to the Relationships Alliance on Tuesday (19 August), the Prime Minister said that the current system of only recording fathers “[did not] reflect modern Britain” and that he has asked the Home Office to address the situation. The announcement signals a victory for a major online campaign on Change.org that has been signed by over 70,000 supporters, including family historians.

Ancestry UK Naval Records

Ancestry.co.uk has started a new collection of UK naval officers and ratings (non-commissioned seaman) service records for the period from 1802 to 1919. This encompasses the World War I time period. This collection of some 89,000 records consists primarily of pension applications and supporting service records. Officers and ratings were awarded pensions after 20 years of service in the Royal Navy. Typical information includes the name of the sailor, rank or rating, a list of ships and service dates and remarks. Some records also include muster and pay registers. Please note: no service records are listed past 1912. That means you can’t use this collection to find out what ships your ancestors served on in World War I. Ancestry records can be accessed FREE on any public computers in Campaspe Regional Library or on your own device using our free wifi.

New Zealand WW1 Records

Archives New Zealand and the National Library have put online the World War I service files of some 141,000 individuals. This collection constitutes essentially of all of the WWI service records in the government’s possession. Many of the service records are several pages long and contain detailed information on each soldier (see examples below). This collection is part of the government’s WW100 centenary program. The service records can be searched by name or service number.

International Committee of the Red Cross

Millions of First World War prisoner records held by the International Committee of the Red Cross have been uploaded to the web for the first time.

Available for free through a new web portal, the vast collection provides details of people who were held in prisoner of war camps across Europe between 1914-1918.
Created by their captors, the records were submitted to the International Prisoners-of-War Agency, which was set up by the ICRC at the start of the conflict to help restore contact between prisoners and their families at home.
Researchers will generally be able to locate an index card for each individual, providing basic details about their imprisonment and reference numbers for any related documents held elsewhere in the database.
Cards containing tracing requests made by prisoners’ next of kin can also be consulted.
Although all civilian-internee index cards from the ICRC’s archives in Switzerland are now online, roughly 20 per cent of the cards for military prisoners from Belgium, France, the UK and Germany are yet to be digitised.
According to the organisation, the missing records will be steadily uploaded over the next six months, with approximately 5 million index cards representing 2.5 million prisoners of the war available through website by the end of 2014.

In addition, the ICRC has also uploaded a large collection of historic postcards and reports on the conditions in which internees were being held at camps across Europe, Egypt, India, Russia and Japan.
Thanks to Who Do You Think You Are Magazine for highlighting this resource.

Family History Month

August is Family History Month and Campaspe Regional Library is offering a series of talks about some of the resources available.

• Introduction to Online Resources
  A 2 hour session introducing some of the major online databases available free to researchers.
• Ancestry Library Edition
  Ancestry is probably the biggest subscription database for family history records worldwide, and is available free using the library computer or wifi.
• FamilySearch
  Created by the Mormon Church, FamilySearch is the result of millions of hours of transcription of parish and other records worldwide and is free for anyone to search.
• PROV
  The Public Records Office of Victoria holds the records of the State Government of Victoria and has a number of databases of digitised records available.
• Trove
  Trove brings together content from libraries, museums, archives and other research organisations.  Search digitised newspapers, books, images, maps, music, archives and more. 
• National Archives of Australia
  Discover more than 100 years of Australian Government records, documenting the history of individuals, communities, and the nation including military records, naturalisations, passenger lists and more. 
• World War 1
  With the Centennary of the start of WW1 this year a number of projects helping people research their WW1 ancestors online have been developed. 
• Organising Your Research
  As you gather more and more information about your family, keeping organised and being able to find and link people and data becomes more difficult.  Gain some hints and tips of how to make organising easy.

Various sessions are being held in Echuca, Kyabram and Rochester libraries and bookings for all these talks are now open via our Campaspe Regional Library website.  You can also see the events taking place all over Australia through the Family History Month website.

52 Weeks of Genealogy - Week 3 - Probates (wills and administration)

Shauna has chosen Probates (wills and administration) for her Week 3 topic and tells us that "probate records can fill in missing information on a family, or provide details that would not be found anywhere else or they may just raise more questions. Either way, it is definitely worth checking (usually the records are at the State Archives) to see if there was a will or an intestacy. Remember to widen your search time period as not all estates were wrapped up shortly after death. It may only occur after the death of both partners. There may not be any probate records to find but you will never know unless you look."

I have had quite a bit of luck with wills - many members of my family lived on the land and made wills and some of them are just fascinating reading.  My favourite is the will of my great great grandfather David Mulholland - it provides a great insight into the dynamics of the family.

All the surviving children are named in David's will, including the married names of his daughters but the will itself is an exercise in sexism and favouritism. 

Henry and James, the two sons who farmed with their father get half the land, half the cattle and half the money each after various bequests are filled.  David's wife Eliza gets to stay in their house for her lifetime, but does not own the dwelling.  She may do as she likes with the furniture, however, and Henry and James are to pay her 5 shillings each per week to live on.  Eldest son David, who has his own business, gets £50 cash while unmarried daughter Jane gets £20.  Of the three married daughters, Mary and Ellen get a shilling each and favourite Pricilla gets £10.  The handwritten will is included below.

Shauna tells us "this blog challenge is to stimulate my own genealogy blogging efforts in 2014 by focusing on a different kind of genealogical record each week. I wanted a challenge that reflected my own archival background as well as my own genealogy interests and there are probably lots of other records that I could have included. The challenge has an Australian focus but most of these records will be found just about anywhere in the genealogy world."  Visit her blog here.