Week 49 (Dec. 2-8): Handed Down

There is so much that can be 'Handed Down' by family.  Heirlooms, certainly, but we are also handed down so much more.  Stories are often handed down by generations, family legends that may or may not be 100% accurate.  Traditions are also 'handed down', some of which are common, some cultural and some unique to your family.  Family traits are handed down in our DNA.  Even names can be 'handed down' within the family, used generation after generation.  The list goes on.

I have blogged several times about my family's Christmas traditions, which started last Sunday when my Christmas tree went up and decorating began.  As usual, the tree will stand un-decorated for a week until my cat loses interest, and tinsel will not be used in my decorating as he sees tinsel as a food group (his stomach and vet both disagree).

A few years ago I posted about my experience of my sister and I cleaning out the family home after the deaths of our parents - our father in 2013 and mother in 2015 - and the importance of knowing the stories behind the many treasures tucked away in cupboards and drawers, or out in the shed.

Cleaning out the house, we came across treasures in every corner.  A hand tinted photo of my mother as a child, a box of slides and negatives from early in our parents' marriage, a small garnet brooch that belonged to my great grandmother, a bronze alligator nutcracker made by my grandfather, and so much more. 

Then there is my heirloom garden gnome.  Some family treasures are small, portable and easy to take with you when you move.  Some, like my gnome, are not.  He is about 50 cm tall, and my family purchased two of them for my father's 50th birthday, back in January 1976.  When we sold the family home my sister and I decided we wanted to keep one gnome each.  At the time we first brought them, there was a rash of gnome-napping happening where we lived, with gnomes disappearing from gardens, never to be seen again.  So my father filled the concrete shells with solid concrete, then installed them on concrete plinths about 30 cm in diameter and 10 cm thick, out in our front yard.  They weigh a ton, and needless to say, they have never been successfully 'gnome-napped'.

Then, there is the heirloom hare's foot fern.  The original hares-foot belonged to my grandmother.  Before she passed away, my mother took a cutting from her plant, brought it home and potted it.  It thrived in our greenhouse and by the time my parents passed away it had overgrown its pot, attached itself to the wooden shelf the pot sat upon, and was firmly attached to the shelf.  Clearly it was not moving with me to my new home.  So much as my mother had done, I took a few cuttings, potted them and hoped for the best.

These two little cuttings have thrived.  They quickly outgrew the little pots I had started them in, and have since been transplanted to bigger pots.  They sit, one in my main bathroom and one in a stand in my dining room, and I think of my mother and grandmother whenever I see them.  I have recently taken a new cutting from one of these plants and potted it for a friend.  And so the heirloom hares-foot fern continues the be 'handed down', hopefully for many years to come.

What items do you have tucked away in odd corners that you hope to 'hand down' to the next generation??  Do your children or grandchildren know the stories behind those treasures you have stored away??  If they don't, chances are they will dismiss those items as junk and they will be lost.  If your children don't know the story behind Great Aunt Mary's tea set - or even that the tea set in the shed was Great Aunt Mary's and not something you picked up on a whim at a jumble sale - then they will have no reason to keep it, value it, and ultimately pass it - and its story - on to another generation.

Trove Tuesday

This week's Trove Highlight focuses on researching the history of your home.  For many family history researchers, discovering the history of the family home can help flesh out the story of how the family came to live there, and tell stories of their lives in that house.

The article discusses the best way to locate information on the history of your house on Trove, using not just newspapers but also Australian architecture and home design magazines from yester-year which published editorials on beautiful and interesting homes and discussed changes in architecture which provide clues about when your house was built and how it may have looked originally.

Then there are Post Office Directories, Town maps and plans, and even photos and images of your home locality which may be available on Trove.  These resources all help in researching your family history via the homes your family lived in.

Once you have exhausted the resources on Trove, there are still state and territory public records offices which may hold property records - sales, changes to the property, building permits, and more.

So try researching the history of the homes your family lived in - you never know what you might find!

Week 48 (Nov. 25-Dec. 1): Very Funny

Throughout my childhood, my parents were fond of telling stories about their lives and our early years on the sheep station 'Para'.  I loved hearing those stories, and in my late teens started writing them down and checking facts where I could - it is how I got started in family history.  So I thought immediately of several stories in response to the prompt 'Very Funny' this week.

Animals were always a big part of Dad’s life and throughout my childhood a succession of cats, dogs and other animals filled our home.  Dad loved them all, and was particularly close to our cat Lucy, the last pet in our household before Dad's death.  

Lucy was 18.5 years old when she died, and in the last yearss of her life was frequently referred to as the geriatric attack cat.  When my little dog Kiera had died aged 15 a few years previously, Lucy took over her guard dog duties, a task she clearly took very seriously.  Many was the time I looked out our back windows to see Dad walking around his garden, his faithful hound … err cat … at his heels.  As if she understood his failing eyesight, she was always about a metre behind, never in front, never under his feet.  And woe betide any stranger who came near HER DADDY while Lucy was on guard.

I happened to be home the day, a few months before Lucy and then Dad passed away, when an electricity meter reader came to the house.  Dad was asleep on his couch on the front verandah, his cat at his side.  Inside the house I heard a strange voice yell and shot out, to find the meter man retreated off the veranda, Lucy with tail like a bottle brush squarely between him and HER DADDY, and Dad still blissfully asleep.  

Standing on the stones in out driveway, blood trickling down his arm, the man told me what had happened. As he entered the gate and approached the verandah, Lucy woke, sat up and hissed.   When he kept coming she jumped off the couch, fluffed herself up and started to growl.  When he stepped onto the veranda, she flew him, biting, clawing and yowling.  The man quickly retreated, and that's when I came out.  There Lucy stayed, firmly between this stranger and HER DADDY, determined he was not getting any nearer.

In the end I held her while the man edged past, quickly read the meter, and retreated again.  "I’m wary of the dogs," he told me, "but I’ve never been attacked by a cat before!"  Fortunately he saw the funny side, as she had drawn blood and I had visions of her being taken away in kitty sized handcuffs!

Over the next few weeks I relayed the story of the geriatric attack cat several times, and was quite taken aback by the number of other visitors who responded that Lucy had warned them off as well.  Friends, our gardener, delivery people, the lady from the chemist delivering Dad's medicines - everyone commented to me that Dad often never woke up as they went about their business, but that cat watched every move they made!  And fortunately everyone found it 'Very Funny'!

Look History in the Eye - Episode 14

Episode 14 of the Public Records Office of Victoria podcast series Look history in the Eye "The Brookside Girls" focuses on Erica Cervini, an award-winning education journalist, researcher and family historian who recently wrote an article for Public Record Office Victoria's Provenance Journal about the Brookside Reformatory for Girls in Cape Clear, ten miles from Scarsdale Victoria. The episode delves into her research, including the cruel and unusual treatment, multiple escapes, and what we can learn from its ultimate failure today. 

The focus of the podcast is Jessie Nairn. Jessie was sent to Brookside in 1896. Jessie was one of the Brookside girls to escape the reformatory. Scared, cold and with nowhere else to go, she ended up handing herself into police.

Jessie and several other girls who escaped were sent back to the reformatory, though their claims of abuse against the institution made it from the police to the newspapers, igniting discussions as to whether the institution was too hard on the girls who lived there.  Jessie and her cohort weren't the first to escape Brookside. Annie Duce escaped many times before! After multiple escape attempts, she ended up back at Melbourne Gaol serving out her sentence for larceny. 

Episode 14: The Brookside girls

Duration: 32 min

Trove Tuesday

Every month newly digitised items are made available in Trove thanks to hundreds of Trove Partners and the National Library of Australia.  Take a look at what has recently been digitised and made available in Trove below.

Diaries, letters and archives

Nineteenth Century handwritten diaries

A collection of diaries and papers written by migrants to Australia. These records provide insight into the voyage from the United Kingdom to Australia and life in the early years of the Australian colonies. They include:

• The journal of Emily Braine
• The journal of Claudius Beresford Cairnes
• The papers of Henry Whittingham
• The diary of Thomas Davies
• The papers of Mary Braidwood Mowle
  

Newspapers and gazettes

Note that the year range listed is an indication of what's currently available in Trove, and not always the full year range the newspaper was published.

NSW

• Maitland Mercury (1940-1955)
• Coolamon-Ganmain Farmers' Review (1919-1937)

VIC

• Sunraysia Daily (1942-1950)
• The Warrnambool Standard (1872-1879)
• The Footscray Advertiser (1884-1887)
• The Advertiser (1887-1913)

Magazines and Newsletters

• Buninyong & Mt. Helen community news (1977-1986)
• Buninyong and district community news (1986-2012)

Curious to see what's in the pipeline? You can also take a look at Trove's coming soon page. 

Really Useful Podcast Series 4

Series 4 of the Really Useful Podcast is now complete, with all 6 episodes now available online.  

This series of family history podcasts covers a range of topics and expert guests and is introduced by Joe Saunders.  Series 4 comprises 6 episodes :

• Episode 1 - Researching women 

• Episode 2 - Introduction to Archives 

• Episode 3 - Yorkshire ancestors 

• Episode 4 - Talks 

• Episode 5 - Sporting ancestors 

• Episode 6 - Beyond the 19th Century

The podcasts are part of the Explore Your Genealogy website, an educational website developed by the Family History Federation that relates to every aspect of tracing your family history from the very first steps to more complex research.

Its main objective is to promote the study and interest in family history (and associated disciplines including local and social history) in a free-to-access, easy-to-navigate website.

Week 47 (Nov. 18-Nov. 24): Random Number

I was a bit baffled about this week's prompt of 'Random Number' before it was suggested picking a random number between 1 and 100 and blogging about the corresponding person in my family tree.  So I asked a friend to pick a number for me, and it led me to John Thompson Argent, my paternal great great grandfather.

 

John Thompson Argent was born on 3 November 1819 in West Bergholt, Essex, England and baptised 10 December 1819 at St Mary's Church.  His father was also named John Thompson Argent, and his mother was Amy, nee Watts.

John became a corn miller like his father, and he married Emma Noble 29 October 1846 in the nearby city of Colchester.  Emma was born 6 July 1824 in Brightlingsea, some 11 miles from West Bergholt.  The couple lived at Newbridge Mill (pictured below) in West Bergholt (1851-1891 censuses) where their 5 children were all born.

 

The couple's five children - John Thompson Argent (1848 - 1907), Emma Noble Argent (1849 - 1935), Ada Emily Argent (1851 - 1929), Constance Minna Argent (1857 - 1929) and Isabella Mary Argent (1858 - 1936).

John Thompson Argent died 22 January 1894 at his home in West Bergholt and was buried at St Mary's Church, the same church as his baptism, alongside his wife Emma who had died in 1880.

John's youngest daughter Isabella married Walter Proctor Green of Manor Farm, Fordham in 1879.  Their only son, my grandfather Frank, would emigrate to Australia in 1907.