Transcription Tuesday Makes A Comeback

As the coronavirus outbreak forces us to stay at home, Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine want to help their readers find fun and productive ways to pass the time, gain new skills and help others while observing social distancing.  As part of this, they have decided to bring back their popular Transcription Tuesday event.

For those unfamiliar with this annual event, WDYTYA readers have been able to transcribe vital family history records for volunteer projects, making them accessible to all.  Earlier this year, their army of volunteers collectively transcribed nearly 25,000 records, from nonconformist parish records to First World War Royal Navy crew lists.

WDYTYA describes transcription is a fascinating way to discover the individual stories hidden in historic records and improve your ability to read old handwriting.  It’s also a way to give back to the family history community. The record you help put online could be a vital breakthrough for another family historian.  Best of all, transcription can be done from your home on your computer or laptop – so it’s the perfect activity for the coronavirus outbreak.

During the coronavirus outbreak, WDYTYA will bring back Transcription Tuesday on a weekly basis, highlighting a different project every Tuesday.  If you have time during the day, even if it’s just a few minutes, you can take part and show your support by transcribing their chosen project.  For their first Transcription Tuesday project on 31 March, they partnering with Ancestry to support their non-profit World Archives Project.  Readers can help to work on a new set of records – English Criminal Lunatic Asylum Registers, 1820-1843.  These records include original letters, prisoner registers and inspection reports relating to the administration of convict, ship and local prisons and to their inmates.  They reveal details of prisoners such as the name, residence, age, crime and sentence.

Click here for instructions to get started transcribing the records.  Note that you will also need to register for a free Ancestry account and download the Keying Tool if you haven't already done so.  You can find out how to do so here.

It is worth noting that you can participate in Transcription Tuesday any day you want - you're not limited to just one day a week.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 11 - At The Courthouse

Thanks to the Corona virus outbreak I am a bit behind in my posts - I think everyone will forgive me.  For so many of us normal life has disappeared, and social distancing has suddenly become an essential part of my vocabulary.

So - the courthouse.  Records from the courts can be an extremely interesting and informative addition to your family history records.  Thefts, bankruptcies, divorces, and other charges - your ancestor may have been involved as defendant, witness or juror.  These records are supplemented by the newspaper reports as well.  Many newspapers reported local court proceedings, and in some cases your can find reports of the same case in different papers, sometimes with quite different slants on the events reported.

The newspaper excerpt below, reporting the divorce of my great grandfather James Nicholas Clark, appeared in court reports in the Brighton Southern Cross, the Oakleigh Leader and the Caulfield and Elsternwick Leader.  All three papers carried the exact same report - down to the last word.

Several databases now carry various court records, and some have even been digitised.  The Public Records Office of Victoria has in their online collection the Melbourne Supreme Court civil case records from 1841 to 1852, along with the Beechworth Court of Petty Sessions record books 1875-1878, cause list books 1875-1888 and Magistrates Court Registers 1888-1988.  They are also in the process of digitising inquests into deaths in the coronial records and have some prison registers available online.  Other court records can be accessed via their reading rooms.  Check your local state archive website to see what they have available from the courthouse.

WDYTYA 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 RB Digital eMagazines.

Inside this month's issue

• Family history on a budget
  Chris Paton reveals his top money-saving tips
• Dating early photographs
  National Trust curator Catherine Troiano shares some beautiful country house photographs and explains how you can date pre-WW1 snaps
• Taxing times
  The controversial introduction of 18th century income tax
• Reader story
  How Gordon Fraser discovered that eight of his wife's ancestors were Everton footballers
• House history
  Gill Blanchard reveals the records that will show you who lived in your house
• Plus...
  Understanding census records; the best hospital and asylum websites; tracing ancestors who served as missionaries, and much more...
   

Around Britain

• Cambridgeshire
  The best resources for finding family in Britain's powerhouse of learning

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 10 - Family Photo

Over the years I have been quite fortunate in accumulating old family photographs from a variety of sources.  Many are copies of photos held by family members, while others have come from libraries and archives, local history societies, distant relatives and heritage projects.  While the bulk of my collection are good digital scans I also have a number of original photos that I have inherited.  All my originals have been scanned for future preservation and happily shared with fellow family members.  I have also detailed who, where and when in as much detail as I can for each one - my pet hate is the anonymous photo of nobody-knows-who included in an album of family members.

One of my favourite family photos is the one above of my father Peter with his siblings and their father, Frank Walter Green.  Dad was one of 10 children and to the best of my knowledge it is the only photo of all 10 siblings together, which makes the scanned image I have even more precious.  And yes, one of the brothers does have a beer bottle balanced on his head!  That would be Ernest, known to all as Squib, the second eldest of the Green siblings.  If there are any relatives out there who have another photo of all 10 siblings together, I would love to hear from you and am happy to share copies!

Other favourite family photos include a few very old portrait photos from my fathers family back in England.  Again, I only have digital copies that I have printed out, but a good digital copy is still very worth having.

Isobelle Mary Green (nee Argent)

Sarah Jane Pike (nee Hart)

From my mother's family, too, I have a few favourites.  Below is a scan of a mock gambling scene featuring my great grandfather James Nicholas Clark, the original given to me by my grandmother many years ago.

James Nicholas Clark

Having a photo of relatives, especially those who died before I was born, helps bring them to life for me and I will always consider myself fortunate to have the photos and scans that I have collected over the years.

Church Heritage Record Announces New Project

It has just been announced that all Church of England burial ground records will be available to search within five years under an ambitious new laser-scanning survey scheme.  Records of the burial grounds for two West Yorkshire churches – All Hallows’ Church in Kirkburton and Emmanuel Church in Shelley – are now available online, and the Church plans to survey all 15,000 burial grounds by 2025.

Nick Edmonds, the Church of England’s senior media officer, said: “It’s a system that has potential for enormous growth and future usage.  It can help people with their family history and accessing burial grounds that they didn’t know about before."  Each burial record will include the name of the deceased, their burial date, their age at death and a photograph of the grave.

The databases will be available via the Church Heritage Record.  Currently the Church Heritage Record website contains over 16,000 entries on church buildings in England covering a wide variety of topics including architectural history, archaeology, art history and the surrounding natural environment. The website is still currently a work in progress and is by no means complete.

The Church will provide £250,000 towards the project and has received the same amount from Historic England, which has also provided spatial data records to support the project.  The scanning also has ecological benefits, by measuring the growth of trees and plants in the graveyards.  It will also help church authorities identify where empty space is available for new burials.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 9 - I'd Like to Meet

There are so many ancestors I would just love to meet – preferably with a notebook and pencil, or recording device in hand!  I'd like the chance to chat with (read - interrogate) just about every ancestor, especially ones with blank spaces in their details in my tree, along with every one I've heard an interesting story about (mainly for some verification).   If I could choose just a couple of individuals, they would be the ones who I have found most elusive, the ones who disappeared from the family and turned up in unexpected places – or who didn’t turn up again at all.

I would start with my great grandfather, James Nicholas Clark, and his parents, John and Ann (nee McGoverin).   James Nicholas Clark was born in Bristol, England in 1856, just before the family emigrated to Australia.  James’s 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 would love to be able to question them about why they decided to leave England, why they chose Tasmania to settle, and then what prompted them to pack up and start all over again in Victoria.  Such moves would not have been undertaken lightly, and travel with a growing brood of young children back in the mid to late 1800’s would not have been easy.  I would have more questions for James’s mother Ann, whose marriage records indicate she was born in Scotland around 1830, as she have for several years been one of my brick walls.  Getting some dates, places and details from this family would be just so exciting.

Another ancestor I would like to meet, for fairly similar reasons, would be Carl Friedrich Beseler.  Known in Australia as Frederick, he was born around 1810 in Hanover, Germany.  He was a shoemaker in Germany and a farmer in Australia, arriving in Adelaide on 1 April 1848 on the ship Pauline from Bremen, Germany.  Passengers listed were Frederick Beseler, Shoemaker, Mrs Beseler and 5 children.  The family lived in South Australia for 7 years before travelling overland to Victoria, where they settled near Ercildown.  Several members of the family are buried in Learmonth Cemetery.  Again, I would like to know what prompted this family, with young children in tow, to pack up and move halfway around the world, settle in one state of Australia, then pack up and move again several years later.

Finally, I would like a chance to talk to my paternal grandfather, Frank Walter Noble Green.  Frank died when I was just 4 years old, and I have few memories of him, but I would love to know more about his life in England before he and his wife Rosa May moved to Australia (there seems to be a theme here – why did you move across the globe?).  According to family stories Frank spent two years in America prior to emigrating to Australia – what did he do in the United States and why did he then move his family to Australia instead of returning to the States?

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 8 - At the Cemetery

Headstones and cemetery records can be incredibly useful records to find.  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.  Over the years I have had some great finds in cemeteries that have helped me overcome brick walls and the loss of other records.

As digitization of cemetery records and photographing of headstones becomes increasingly common, we are able to access from home even more records.  While nothing can replace actually visiting an ancestor’s grave in person, finding records I cannot visit myself available online is a definite bonus.  I have found online the cemetery records of a number of relatives who lived overseas, whose graves I am unlikely to be able to visit for some time, if ever.  Like so many other researchers, I owe a debt to those who have given their time to photograph headstones and transcribe cemetery records.

I have been lucky enough to acquire photographs of the headstones of many family members, some during personal visits and others sent by relatives or located online through sites like Find-A-Grave or BillionGraves.  The quality and amount of information on them varies a lot, as does the legibility and the state of preservation of the headstone.  It is worth noting that not all tombstones actually date from the time the gravesite was actually used - the stones themselves could be installed at a much later date by relatives, or be replacements for older stones which have been damaged or destroyed.

One particular headstone I have photographed was in extremely good condition, and commemorated several family members from a couple of generations.  The stone probably dates from the time of death of the last person included - was there an older tombstone in place at some time that has now been replaced, or is this a more 'general' tombstone that commemorates several family members buried in the area over time??  Who erected this stone, and where did they obtain the information they have included on it?  I need to delve into the cemetery records for this particular tombstone to find out more, and confirm the accuracy of the records, especially the older names and dates.