GeneaHangouts

Have you ever participated in a Genie Hangout on Air??  If not, check out Jill Ball's GeneaHangouts this Sunday, a final blast for National Family History Month.  Times for the hangouts are :

GeneaGala Hangout on Air - Session 1 - Google+

Sydney, Australia     30th August 09:00 - 12 :00

London, UK             30th August 12:01 - 03:00

New York                 29th August 19:00 - 22:00

Los Angeles             29th August 16:00 - 19:00

GeneaGala Hangout on Air - Session 2 - Google+

Sydney, Australia     30th August 12:00 - 15:00

London, UK              30th August 03:00 - 06:00

New York                 29th August 22:00 - 01:00

Los Angeles             29th August 19:00 - 22:00

GeneaGala Hangout on Air - Session 3 - Google+

Sydney, Australia     30th August 15:00 - 18:00

London, UK              30th August 03:00 - 06:0

New York                 30th August 01:00 - 04:00

Los Angeles             29th August 22:00 - 01:00

GeneaGala Hangout on Air - Final Session - Google+

Sydney, Australia     30th August 18:00 - 21:00

London, UK             30th August 09:00 - 12:00 

New York                30th August 04:00 - 07:00

Los Angeles            30th August 01:00 - 04:00

As you can see, Jill will be a very busy lady and all talked out by the end of the day.  Many of Jill's GeneaFriends are participating and will discuss various topics.  I'm hoping to attend at least one session, depending on when I am home.  I hope to chat to you then.

Truth in family stories

I have, once again, been having some fun with my subscription to British Newspapers Online (the pay-to-use, and therefore nowhere near as good, British version of Trove), delving into the family stories and finding extra detail to add to them.  I recently discovered that one of my fathers ancestors was involved in a libel case, taking a newspaper editor to court for his suggestion his wife had been having an affair.  The report below is from the Chelmsford Chronicle on Friday 5th October 1888.

The trial was featured in several newspapers and included reports of testimony from several witnesses who had purchased the paper, read the article and drawn the same conclusion as to who it discussed and the misdeeds it inferred.  Eventually the jury retired and after deliberation of just 23 minutes, found Editor Ernest Brown guilty of all charges, and he was sentenced to three months in prison.  The final paragraph of a lengthy article from the Essex Newsman on Saturday 8th December 1888 is below.

There is a final piece to this puzzle reported later that month.  A short notice which says a great deal about the opinion of the public in this case was reported in the Essex Newsman on Saturday 29 December 1888, about a public subscription being started to repay Walter Green's costs in pursuing the libel case.  The case is referred to as a public service to the community - leaving no doubt as to exactly where sympathies lay!

Family History Month

Once again August is Family History Month, and events, talks and activities are taking place across the country.  Campaspe Regional Library is again offering a number of Genealogy talks, so I will take this weekend to limber up my vocal chords before the first sessions start Monday at our Tongala Branch.  Bookings are available via the library homepage so please check out what is on offer and book yourself in - all the sessions are free and will be held in Echuca, Kyabram, Rochester and Tongala.  The updated notes from each session will be uploaded to the library homepage shortly.
Topics include :

• Introduction to online records
• Organising your Family History research
• Using Ancestry Library Edition
• Using FamilySearch
• Online records at the Public Records Office of Victoria
• Trove and the National Library of Australia
• Researching your military ancestors
• Irish Family History records online
• History of the Workhouses

FreeREG

Have you checked out the new FreeREG website??  The new upgrade was launched in April - yes, its taken me a while to find out about it.  Better late than never.  The database contains some 35 million records and is constantly growing, as volunteers upload more records.
The website states "Our objective is to provide free Internet searches of baptism, marriage, and burial records, which have been extracted from parish registers and non-conformist church records in the UK. The recording of baptisms, marriages and burials in parish registers began in England in 1538 and is separate and distinct from the civil registration process that began in 1837. (The latter is covered by our companion project FreeBMD) Our aim is to make it easier for researchers, no matter where they are in the world, to locate a specific record relating to their ancestor within a parish register."
While the site does not publish transcriptions, it is a great resource for tracking down where your relevant records are located, and the new interface is clear, concise and easy to use. Well done!  A great resource - I have happily updated my bookmark.

Britain on Film

An array of early ‘home movies’ are among thousands of historic films available to watch through a new British Film Institute service. Launched earlier this month, Britain on Film provides access to a vast archive of films dating back 120 years, giving a vivid insight into family life at the time. Users can search the archive via a map of the British Isles, enabling them to zoom in and find videos relating to the places their ancestors came from. Highlights include the Passmore Family Collection, which includes footage of children playing on a beach in Bognor Regis in 1903 – thought to be the earliest surviving home movie in existence. 
Around 2,500 films including home movies, documentaries and news footage from Victorian times up to the 1980s is now available online.  The films have been digitised thanks to National Lottery money and the aim is to have 10,000 available within three years.

Irish WW1 Exhibit Online

Rare and previously unpublished WW1 material held in the Trinity College Dublin Library is now available to be viewed online thanks to a collaboration between Trinity and Google.
The Great War Revisited Exhibition features 80 exhibits of unique heritage material from Trinity’s rare books and manuscripts collections relating to the Great War, including recruiting posters, letters, diaries, photographs, videos, pamphlets and artworks.
Highlights of the exhibition include:

• Trinity’s celebrated collection of Irish WWI recruiting posters (one of the largest collection in existence)
• Previously unpublished photographs of the Allied campaign in Iraq and Turkey
• Letters and diaries from Irish soldiers serving in France, Iraq and Palestine (previously unpublished)
• A multitude of political pamphlets, songs and ballads and artworks

Helen Shenton, Librarian and College Archivist, said: “The Library of Trinity College Dublin is delighted to be partnering with Google Cultural Institute on the Great War Revisited online exhibition. Showcasing the richness of First World War material held in the Library, the online exhibition forms part of the Library's commitment to opening up its historic collections for global online access.”

Catholic Parish Registers at the NLI

The National Library of Ireland (NLI) has uploaded 390,000 digital images of baptism and marriage registers to a new website, where they can be accessed free of charge.
Covering more than a thousand Catholic parishes, the scanned microfilm pages reveal details of people living across the entire island between the 1740s and 1880s.
While the material has not yet been transcribed, users can find individuals by selecting a county, parish and then browsing through the scans page-by-page.
Due to the destruction of crucial records during the Irish War of Independence, the registers are considered most important source for tracing ancestors in the country prior to the 1901 Census.
Although indexes to the registers have been created in the past, this is the first time the full records have been published on the web. As a result, researchers can consult the original handwritten entries and be more confident they are getting accurate information.
The NLI holds microfilm copies of over 3500 registers from 1086 parishes in Ireland and Northern Ireland. The start dates of the registers vary from the 1740/50s in some city parishes in Dublin, Cork, Galway, Waterford and Limerick, to the 1780/90s in counties such as Kildare, Wexford, Waterford and Kilkenny. Registers for parishes along the western seaboard do not generally begin until the 1850/60s.

Ancestry - new and updated in June

New and updated collections on Ancestry.com for June:

• Australia Newspaper Vital Notices, 1851-1997
• Brandenburg, Germany, Transcripts of Church Records, 1700-1874 (in German) 
• Hamburg, Germany, Selected Deaths, 1876-1932 (in German)
• Index to Alien Arrivals at Canadian Atlantic and Pacific Seaports, 1904-1944
• Mainz, Germany, Family Registers 1760-1900 (in German) 
• Missouri, Marriage Records, 1805-2002 
• Nevada, Naturalization Petitions, 1956-1991
• New South Wales, Australia, St. John's Parramatta, Baptisms, 1790-1916
• New South Wales, Australia, St. John's Parramatta, Burials, 1790-1986
• New South Wales, Australia, St. John's Parramatta, Church Records, 1838-1918
• New South Wales, Australia, St. John's Parramatta, Confirmations, 1911-1925 and 1960-1966
• New South Wales, Australia, St. John's Parramatta, Marriages, 1790-1966
• New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957 
• Pennsylvania, Death Certificates, 1906-1963 
• Pennsylvania, Passenger and Crew Lists, 1800-1962 
• Pomerania, Germany, Passenger Lists, 1869-1901 (in German) 
• Prenzlau, Germany, Births, 1874-1901 (in German)
• Prenzlau, Germany, Deaths, 1874-1950 (in German)
• Prenzlau, Germany, Marriages, 1874-1923 (in German)
• Romania, Vital Records from Selected Regions, 1607-1914 (in German)
• Speyer, Germany, Domestic Help, 1875-1914 (in German)
• Surrey, England, Calendar of Prisoners, 1848-1902
• Surrey, England, Mental Hospital Admissions, 1867-1900
• Sweden, Selected Indexed Death Records, 1840-1860 and 1878-1942(in Swedish) 
• U.S. World War I Mothers' Pilgrimage, 1929 
• U.S., Applications for Authorization for Inter-Island Travel, 1947-1952
• U.S., Select Military Registers, 1862-1985 
• UK, British Army Muster Books and Pay Lists, 1812-1817
• Web: Lawrence County, Alabama, Burial Index, 1835-2014
• Web: Minnesota, Birth Index, 1900-1934 

Remember Ancestry Library Edition is FREE to use via our public computers or wi-fi in all branches of Campaspe Regional Library.  For a complete list of all added/updated collections on Ancestry, go to http://www.ancestry.com/cs/recent-collections

Global Name Translation

The following press release just arrived in my e-mail inbox - many thanks to 
Daniel Horowitz from MyHeritage for sending our the information.

MyHeritage Launches Breakthrough Global Name Translation™ Technology to Power Family History Discoveries

New technology eliminates language barriers to enhance family history research and preservation

TEL AVIV, Israel & LEHI, Utah – July 8, 2015: MyHeritage, the leading destination for discovering, preserving and sharing family history, today announced the launch of Global Name Translation™, a new technology to help families break through language barriers in the quest to uncover their past. The technology automatically translates names found in historical records and family trees from one language into another, in very high accuracy, generating all the plausible translations, to facilitate matches between names in different languages. In addition, a manual search in one language will also provide results in other languages, translated back to the user's language for convenience. This is a unique innovation not offered elsewhere, useful for anyone interested in discovering their global roots.

There are many immediate benefits for users. For example, people living in the USA with Russian roots previously had to search for their ancestors in Russian to maximize their chances of finding pertinent information. The new technology will now accept searches in English, automatically increase their scope to cover Russian and Ukrainian as well, and conveniently translate all results back to English.

MyHeritage has developed this technology using original research, advanced algorithms and based on its massive multilingual and international database of 6 billion family tree profiles and historical records. The technology covers first names and last names and is able to tackle not only names encountered in the past but also new names it has never encountered before. The technology is generic but also utilizes extensive dictionaries built by MyHeritage to cover synonyms and nicknames. Therefore a search for Alessandro (Alexander in Italian) will also find "Саша" which is the Russian form of Sasha, a popular nickname of Alexander in Russia.

The first version successfully translates names in between English, German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Greek, Hebrew, Polish, Czech, Russian and Ukrainian. The next version currently in development will add Chinese and Japanese, and additional languages will follow.

To take advantage of Global Name Translation™ technology, create a new family tree for free on MyHeritage and enjoy the automatic matches or use MyHeritage's SuperSearch search engine for historical records.

July/August Inside History magazine is out now

Articles in issue 29, the Jul-Aug 2015 edition of Inside History magazine include :

• The best online history and family history courses from Australia and around the world
• Bushrangers: deadly criminals or folk heroes? Two expert authors debate the iconic bushranger’s place in Australian history
• 99 new online genealogy resources to help grow your family tree
• The man behind 3.26 million lines of corrections on Trove – and how he’s linking them to Ancestry’s online family trees
• Gaol records: our expert guide
• What to do when your ancestor disappears off the family tree
• How the Royal Australian Mint is commemorating the historic Magna Carta
• Norfolk Island’s secret past

The issue is out now in newsagents, or read electronically via Zinio - FREE with your library membership at Campaspe Regional Library.

Did your Ancestor fight at Waterloo?

Newly added to the records available from Ancestry.com are those of the British troops who fought in the Napoleonic Wars and Anglo-American War, including the historic Battle of Waterloo.  Digitized from documents held by the National Archives in series WO 12, the collection comprises some 460,000 pay and enlistment records, known as Muster Rolls.
According to the Ancestry website, "this series comprises selected muster books and pay lists of the Cavalry, Foot Guards and regular infantry regiments of the line. Also included are special regiments or corps, colonial troops, various foreign legions and troops, garrison battalions, veteran battalions and depots. The majority of muster books and pay lists cover the period from 1812 to 1817, during the Napoleonic Wars and the Anglo-American War, though some rolls go back as far as 1779 and also up to 1821. Several regiments that participated in the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815 are included in this collection."
Muster rolls and pay lists were troop lists taken on a monthly or quarterly basis for pay and accounting purposes and may provide enlistment dates, movements, and discharge dates of soldiers. For most regiments or units in this collection, records have been indexed from one muster roll per year. Rolls and lists not indexed may be browsed by category and piece description.
Records vary but may include the following details:

• name
• start date
• end date
• regiment
• where stationed
• rank
• pay 

So have a look and see of any of your ancestors fought during these wars, and the collection could help you fill in the details of their service, the battles the fought in, how much they were paid and if they were ever held as prisoners of war.  Remember access to Ancestry is free in all our library branches.

Lunatic Asylum Records

The records of more than 840,000 patients committed to British mental institutions during the 19th and early 20th century have been collected by Ancestry.com.  The Lunacy Registers and Warrants 1820 - 1912 were digitised from records held at the National Archives in Kew, West London.  Each record contains the patient's name, institution name, admission date, death/discharge date and - in many cases - the reason for being transferred to the institution and past crimes committed. 

The admission records and warrant books were compiled by the Lunacy Commission, which was set up in 1845 to oversee the country's growing network of asylums.  They detail people who were either transferred from prisons on grounds of insanity or found not guilty and sent to asylums instead.  By the end of the nineteenth century there were over 300 mental institutions in the UK, some of which are still in operation today.  These include Bethlem Royal Hospital, where the word 'bedlam' originated and Hanwell Asylum, which is best known for its revolutionary and humane approach to the treatment and rehabilitation of those affected by mental disorders.

Within the collection are some of Victorian Britain's most notorious violent criminals who were judged not guilty of their crimes by virtue of their insanity.  They include Aaron Kosminski who has recently had been considered, though discounted, as being Jack the Ripper.  The Polish Jew emigrated to the UK in 1881 and worked as a barber in London's East End before being committed to Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum in 1891 for lewd behaviour.

As well as more serious crimes, many of the people committed to these institutions were housed there for long spells after being found guilty of relatively minor offences.  This includes women like Elizabeth James who was sent to an asylum simply for 'being disorderly' and Jane Smith who found herself committed in 1821 for stealing two blankets.  The records also reveals how many patients tragically died in institutions after spending most of their lives locked up.  One patient, Elias Rosenthal, lived at Rubery Asylum in Birmingham for a total of 59 years until her death.

Free Webinars for American Research

Are you researching family in the United States?  Then you may be interested in a series of free webinars to be offered by the people at FamilySearch this October.  While the actual sessions for this series of classes are full, 15 will be offered as online webinars for anyone who is interested to attend. Click here to look at the program of topics offered.

From their website, the statement reads :

"The Family History Library and the Research Specialists of the United States and Canada Reference team invite you to a free, never before offered, week-long seminar. The focus will be exclusively U.S. research. The seminar is perfect for beginning and intermediate genealogists interested in learning about U.S. records, FamilySearch resources, and Family History Library collections.

Come and spend a week learning from our expert staff of genealogists on how to effectively use the FamilySearch Catalog, Historical Records, and Research Wiki. Explore such topics as cemetery, census, church, immigration, land, military, naturalization, newspaper, probate, and vital records. Learn more about African-American and American Indian research. And discover new techniques, strategies, and methodology to apply to your genealogical research problems."

So check out the range of topics and see if there are any that interest you, and mark them in your diary for October.

Twile - a new way to share your research

While Twile has been around since 2013, I have only recently heard about it and gone to have a look.  While I do sometimes sigh and wonder if I want ANOTHER online tree that I have to keep updating, this presents data in a somewhat different way and is well worth a look.  The more basic version is free, your data and photos are only available to the people you choose, so have a try and tell me what you think.

The following announcement comes from the Twile website:

"Twile allows family historians to create rich, visual timelines of their family history, made up of milestones and photos from their ancestors’ lives. Genealogy services, like MyHeritage and Ancestry, focus primarily on providing access to historical records. Twile, on the other hand, helps users get a visualization of the information and easily share it with their family.

The website is completely free to use, allowing users to build or import their family tree and create a timeline by uploading photos or adding milestones – such as birth, marriage and death – for anyone on the tree. Twile Plus is a premium subscription service and is available for £19.99 per year, giving access to a wider library of milestone types."