52 Weeks of Genealogy - Week 23 - Electoral Rolls

Shauna has chosen Electoral Rolls for her topic for Week 23, and in my family research I have gained a great deal of information from researching electoral rolls, so I love having access to them.  In her blog Shauna notes that "Electoral rolls can show changes of address, change of name for women after marriage, the death of a spouse or adult children leaving home. Sometimes an elderly parent moves back in with an adult child.  In Australia we have both state and commonwealth rolls and both should be checked as sometimes people only update one and not the other or they are updated at different times.  Information gained is mostly the person’s name, occupation and address but the information at different times can indicate deaths or separations or movement interstate and so on."
I have used the Electoral Rolls to track the movements of several family members as some individuals changed address frequently.  For my father's family they have been especially useful in tracking where his parents lived, as they covered most of the state of Victoria from the time they arrived in Australia until they died.  Tracking them through the electoral rolls help me pin down exactly where each of Dad's siblings were born and to make a timelone of where Dad lived in his youth.
My only regret with the Rolls is that they just don't date back far enough - most of my mother's family arrived in Australia in the 1840's and 1850's and, of course, we don't have the wealth of Census information here in Australia that they enjoy in Britain - having older Electoral Rolls would really be helpful!
Read Shauna's full article on Electoral Rolls here.  Thanks again Shauna - I look forward to reading what subject you choose to explore next. 

52 Weeks of Genealogy - Week 22 - Family Letters

Shauna is back after a very busy August as the National Voluntary Coordinator of Family History Month, and a HUGE congratulations is in order for all her work and enthusiasm in making the Month bigger and better than last year.  There was an impressive number and variety of activities across the country and I'm sure a lot of people were delighted by the offerings.  Well done to everyone involved.

Shauna's Week 22 topis is family letters and she tells us that "with the widespread adoption of email , Facebook and other social media as a means of communicating with family members, letters and correspondence between people is becoming a rarity. As family historians however, we cherish finding long lost letters written by our ancestors or correspondence highlighting family events and containing information that we are not likely to find in official documents."

I have very little in the way of old family letters but did manage to save some correspondence from one of my great-uncles, who I wrote to in my teens when I first became interested in my family history.  G-Uncle Russell had a very individual style of writing and sometimes it took a bit of effort to decipher exactly what he meant, but I am so glad I saved his letters - and that they were not among the many things my father threw away without my knowledge during one of his 'cleaning up' sessions.

Like many others, I rarely handwrite letters today, finding e-mail so much faster and easier, but looking back over the few family letters I have, I must say it is a shame.  I do print out and save important e-mails, but it just isn't the same as a letter someone has taken the time to sit down and write by hand.  It may be harder to read but a handwritten letter is just more personal - but it is also a dying art.

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."  Read Shauna's article on Family Letters here.

Canberra Congress

I have just booked myself in to attend the 14th Australasian Congress on Genealogy and Heraldry in Canberra next year, and what a selection of papers they have on offer again.  Once more the organisers have excelled with a varied program of speakers covering a wealth of subjects.  The Australasian Congress is generally held every 3 years, and I missed the last one in Adelaide due to the ill health of my father.  I'm really excited to be able to make it to this one, and can only regret that I still cannot be in two places at once as there are a number of concurrent talks I would love to attend.

It is not just the talks that make these conferences so wonderful - the exhibits, the mingling with other genealogy enthusiasts, the swapping ideas, resources and brick wall suggestions.  This year there is even a Librarian's Meeting the day before, so I will catch up with some colleagues as well.

The theme for the Congress is Generations Meeting Across Time, and there will be more than fifty presentations and/or workshops allowing Congress participants to hear about the newest developments in family history research, emerging issues and the latest technologies.  There will also be an extensive trade display showcasing the latest publications, products and services for the family historian.

To all those out there who will be attending also, I look forward to seeing you in Camberra next year!

Irish Archives Resource

The Irish Archives Resource portal has significantly expanded the number of collections that can be searched on the website from 360 to over 500 different collections. It covers 34 archives in Ireland. Although this website does not provide ancestral records, it does provide index searches to many of Ireland’s key repositories. By searching keywords such as an ancestor’s name, it is possible to find out what archives hold what records. This is an important resource for anyone wanting to trace their Irish ancestors. This latest expansion makes the website much more powerful. Access is free.

Old and Interesting

Old and Interesting is a website devoted to the history of everyday domestic items such as washing boards, irons, brooms and kitchen utensils. What does this have to do with genealogy? Two things: it can provide context on how your ancestors lived and it can be a useful resource when you are trying to date old images and photographs that might happen to contain household items.
The website is a wealth of information on everyday household items, how they were used, why they were used and what they looked like. As an added bonus, by looking at this website you may be able to finally figure out the purpose of that old family doohickey/heirloom.
Thanks again to Genealogy in Time for highlighting another useful resource.

Hear Names

One of the biggest challenges in genealogy is overcoming the spelling of names. As your family tree goes back in time, spelling becomes more uncertain. Part of the problem lies in known spelling variations for certain names (Smith, Smyth, Smythe, etc.). The main problem, however, is that historically many people did not know how to read and write.
Names that were said out loud were often mistakenly written down in a different format. Knowing the proper pronunciation of an ancestor’s name can therefore be a good starting point in trying to decipher how it may have been written down on an old immigration form, a census record or a parish record. But what happens if your ancestor was from Finland or Croatia and you don’t know how to pronounce names in these languages?

Enter Hear Names. This is a website dedicated to the pronunciation of names from around the world. You can either type in a name and it will tell you how to pronounce it or you can search for names by language. Over 25 different languages are listed on the website. Hearing the proper oral pronunciation of a name is a good starting point for trying to reverse engineer how a name may have appeared in written format on historic documents, such as immigration forms.
Hear Names continues to be built out. The authors have informed us that new names can still be submitted to add to the database.
Thanks to Genealogy In Time for highlighting this website.

Measuring Worth

Have you ever come across an old family will or an old land record that states the value of an estate and you wondered how much it would be worth in today’s dollars? There are many websites on the internet that will convert an historical amount into today’s value, but none do it better than Measuring Worth.
Run by two academics with a deep knowledge of alternate ways to compare the historic worth of things, the website provides several ways to convert an historic price into a modern price.
It also converts across currencies just in case you want to know how much UK £10 in 1810 is in today’s dollars (answer $838 using CPI inflation data). The currencies covered by the website include US dollars, UK pound and the Australian dollar. The dataset goes back into the 1700s.

Irish Records Online

Ireland Genealogy Projects has put online a national list of school teachers for the 1873-1874 school year. The list is organized by region and then alphabetically by the name of the teacher. The list also includes monitors, who were senior students aged 12 to 18 that assisted the teacher. Many monitors later went on to become teachers.

 The Clare County Library has added more school rolls to their collection. The latest addition involves the roll books and school register for Lacken National School, which was located east of Kilmihil village. The records for boys cover the years from 1865 to 1922 and the records for girls cover the years from 1889 to 1922. You can search the registers by either school year or surname. Each record lists the student’s name, year of birth, year entered school, home town and parent’s occupation.

A new website has been launched that contains historic Irish street directories and some historic maps of the country.
Included on this website are a collection of digitized maps of Dublin and Ireland, viewable in Google map format, a revised and improved townland database, scans and extracts from a number of directories, a guide to the important, and unique, system of land divisions of Ireland (townlands etc), and a brief introduction and guide to Irish records. 

All are free to access.

Canadian WW1 Records

The website Canadiana has put online the militia lists of each unit of the Canadian Expeditionary Force as of August 1914 (the beginning of World War I). Each record lists the name of each member of the unit, rank, country of birth and date and place of enlistment. Some records also list next of kin and address. Canada was unprepared at the start of World War I. It had only 3,100 men under arms. As volunteers were quickly recruited and organized in Canada, members of the Canadian Expeditionary Force were sent to Europe to help reinforce these newly formed units. Therefore, when looking for ancestors in this collection, be aware that they most likely left Canada under one unit and then were reassigned to a different unit as soon as they arrived in Britain. This collection can be searched by keyword (such as name) and date range. Access is free.

Family History Month

August and Family History Month are now over.  Thanks to all those people who attended my classes in Rochester and Echuca - your enthusiasm has been greatly appreciated.  My apologies to those in Kyabram whose sessions were cancelled while I was ill, I hope to reschedule soon.  During September I will upload the handouts from all my classes onto the Campaspe Regional Library Genealogy page, and will try to keep them updated regularly.  Questions, comments and feedback will be welcomed.
I have always enjoyed running these classes and this year has been no exception.  Not only is it wonderful to see other people's enthusiasm for family history, preparing for and running these classes fires up my own enthusiasm as well.  There is always something new to discover, another hint to track down, another detail to add to my family history.  Not much housework this weekend - I'm going to be researching!
Thanks everyone - I hope to see you in the library again soon!

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.