Week 52 (Dec. 24-31) Memorable

"Memorable' is the final prompt for 2025, and it has me looking back over the year and my memories of 2025.  What does this year leave with me?  What memorable Family History finds did I make?

The discoveries I have made throughout the year include : 

• my father's Air Force enlistment photograph from the National Archives of Australia
• my great uncle's listing on the Rats of Tobruk website
• newspaper articles too numerous to mention individually
• photographs of the Newbridge Mill owned by my Argent ancestor's thanks to The Mills Archive
• new records available online including digitized Suffolk baptisms, marriages and burials on Ancestry
• new DNA matches with distant relatives
• reconnecting with a cousin I hadn't spoken to in years and sharing family stories

All these finds have been highlights of my years and feed my enthusiasm to continue my researching. 

Who knows what memorable finds await in 2026. 

Merry Christmas

To all those who have read this blog throughout the year, and to all those our there in the wider Genealogical community, I wish you a happy, healthy and safe Christmas and New Year.

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 : 

• Uncovering Australia's past traces
• New British Library catalogue
• Ness of Brodgar Time Team dig confirmed for Summer 2026
• Storied cards - 12 simple questions to get friends and family reminiscing
• Scottish Indexes: free online conference
• Vilnius University creates first open-access AI Yiddish transcription tool
• Essex Regiment Museum closing January 2026
• DNA Club news 
• Go beyond just names, places and dates and really discover your family story
• ‘Diana otherwise Jessie’ Tracing one of Britain’s ‘Brown Babies’
• Old, Out of the Ordinary Occupations
• The Edwardian History Society discovering the past of a rare surname
• Getting started with medals
• The family tree AI bookcamp
• Tracing the shadows in the Beck-Bailey mystery
• DNA glossary helpful terms and phrases for DNA testing
• Medieval Wills & Feet of Fines
• And more... 

Week 51 (Dec. 17-23) Musical

The prompt for Week 24 was 'Artistic', and as to the best of my knowledge there have been no artists in my ancestry I chose to focus on music, which is the focus for Week 51.   So as I have already blogged about my mother's musical talent, I searched my records for other musical talent amongst my ancestors.

Included in my newspaper records, I found several articles relating to musical events and concerts in which various ancestors performed, especially my Argent branch of my family tree.

 The article above is from the Essex Standard published Friday 7 January 1876 and has several members of my Argent family preforming.  My Great Great Grandfather John Thompson Argent was Chair or the event and his sister Ada Emily Argent was the pianist.

These musical evenings were apparently a regular winter highlight, and reports of similar concerts appeared in several newspapers.

The final concert for the winter of 1875/76 was reported above in the Essex Standard on Friday 11 February 1876, with the following season's first concert reported below on Friday 1 December 1876.

 Clearly music was a large part of my ancestors' lives and musical performances formed a large part of the social network in their community.

Australian Air Force Photographs

The National Archives of Australia (NAA) have added a number of Australian Air Force photographs to their online database.

Through the NAA's RecordSearch, Air Force Personnel Records can be searched by name or by service number.

Searching the database for my father, Peter Jeffrey Green, returns two results.

The first result is his digitised personnel file, some 43 pages in length.  The second file is his enlistment photograph.

Locating this photo was quite a surprise - I had never seen it before and, along with a posed photo of him in Air Force uniform taken some weeks later, it is among the few photos I have of my father as a young man.

Week 50 (Dec. 10-16) Family Heirloom

Family Heirlooms come in many forms - from the more traditional jewellery and china to more unusual items.  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.  Most heirlooms 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 more 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 and was firmly attached to the wooden shelf below.  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 study and one on a stand in my dining room, and I think of my mother and grandmother whenever I see them.  I later took 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.

Week 49 (Dec. 3-9) Written

OK, it's soapbox time again!

I have blogged several times over the past few years about the importance of family historians recording their own significant events for inclusion in their family history, to be handed down to future generations.

In 2020 the world experienced a historic global pandemic, with many of us moving in and out of lockdowns and various restrictions on our daily lives as the world struggled to limit the spread and impact of Covid-19.  Like many I was stood down from my job, saw businesses close and contacts restricted, and in the small community where I live, unforgettably saw armed police restricting travel across the state border.  I spent my 50th birthday in lockdown, isolated at home.

While many of my memories of the pandemic restrictions, which flowed on into 2021, are stressful, there were also many positives.  So many people came together to keep each other going.  Online shopping boomed and the concept of 'click and collect' became (and remains) common.  In the genealogical community meetings and conferences went online and access to many digitised records were relaxed to make research from home easier.  The idea of working from home became much more common in many industries.  During this time I did my best to record my experiences and feelings, both positive and negative.

Hard on the heels of 2 years of Covid lockdowns, 2022 saw my home area suffer the worst floods in living memory.  While my home itself was not impacted, many friends saw their homes flood, roads and highways were cut, access to services cut, shops closed and like many I came under an evacuation order.  

We watched the Murray River flood parkland, the water creeping closer and closer, flooding homes and breeching levies like the one behind the library where I work - see the photo below.  As the water rose the community came together to frantically sandbag homes and businesses, another wonderful show of community spirit in the face of a crisis.

These are memories that need to be recorded as part of our family history.  We have all lived through a global pandemic and lived through or witnessed a number of historic events in recent years.  Recording our memories of such major events should be a part of our family history records, for the generations that come after us.

Then there are the smaller events of family significance.  A birthday, anniversary, funeral, graduation, family reunion and so on.  These need to be recorded and added to your family story.

So please, become your own storyteller and record your memories.  Get it written.