Unlock the Past Seminars

Those wonderful people at Unlock the Past are presenting more seminars around Australia, with the Melbourne 2 day session coming up soon.

Seminars will be held in :

• Melbourne 19th-20th April
• Canberra 23rd April
• Sydney 26th-27th April
• Adelaide 18th-19th May
• Perth 8th-9th June
• Brisbane 19th-20th October

I've booked my ticket for Melbourne and am looking forward to taking lots of notes, chatting with fellow genealogists and buying a few new books to read.  The program for Melbourne is below and looks great.

Thursday 19 April 2018

9.00am	registration and exhibition
9.25am	welcome and seminar introduction
9.30am	Locating your ancestor’s place of origin in Germany - E. Kopittke
10.20am	Online newspapers: what happened in the “dash” - R. Kopittke
11.10am	break and exhibition
11.40am	Midwives and nurses: and researching female ancestors - S. Zada
12.30pm	lunch break and exhibition
1.40pm	Understanding the system: a brief overview of the history of the German region - E. Kopittke
2.30pm	Convict ancestors - S. Zada
3.20pm	break and exhibition
4.00pm	Researching in German church and civil records - E. Kopittke
4.50pm	close

Friday 20 April 2018

9.00am	registration and exhibition
9.25am	welcome and seminar introduction
9.30am	Understanding your World War One ‘Digger’ - N. Smith
10.20am	Beyond just indexes: why we should check source records - R. Kopittke
11.10am	break and exhibition
11.40am	topic and speaker TBA
12.20pm	prize draw
12.30pm	lunch break and exhibition
1.40pm	Researching your Freemason ancestor - R. Hamilton
2.30pm	Tracing your World War Two Australian military ancestors - N. Smith
3.20pm	break and exhibition
3.40pm	ScotlandsPeople: the place to launch your Scottish research - R. Kopittke
4.30pm	close

Week 12 - Misfortune - 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

One of many newpaper articles on the
attack found using Trove

After last week's post 'Lucky', this week we are focusing on the opposite side of the coin, 'Misfortune'.  Sadly, every family suffers some kinds of misfortune, the bad with the good.

As I said last week, this week I would focus on the only child in the Clark family to die young - my great uncle Norman William Clark.  Her was born 10th August 1910 and died 15th February 1930, the victim of the first shark fatality in Victorian waters in over 50 years.  Norman, along with his girlfriend and younger brother Russell, was watching a boating regatta from Middle Brighton Pier in Melbourne.  During a break in the races Norman decided to have a swim, and dived off the end of the pier.  The shark came from underneath the pier, grabbed Norman, and dragged him out to sea.  Over 100 people on the pier and beach witnessed the attack, and regatta officials tried to reach him, firing their starting guns in an effort to drive the shark away, but all in vain.  Norman was dragged out to sea and his body was never recovered.

The attack received wide publicity and was reported in newspapers around the country, including the Melbourne Argus, Brisbane Courier, Hobart Mercury and Canberra Times.  I have over 30 newspaper articles, sourced through the wonderful Trove, describing the attack and subsequent search for the shark and Norman's body.  Many of the headlines were sensational, with the one above even declaring a 'Thrilling Struggle' - certainly not a headline a newspaper today would use when describing a shark attack fatality.

Week 11 - Lucky - 32 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Russell Nicholas Clark

The prompt for Week 11 of #52ancestors is "Lucky", and I have been reflecting on just how lucky my maternal grandmother's family was during the Second World War.

My maternal grandmother, Gladys Daisy Clark, was born 30 June 1906, the 5th child (and 5th daughter) of James Nicholas Clark and Pricilla Veronica (nee Mulholland).  Eventually she would be one of 12 children, plus another 2 half siblings from James' first marriage to Eliza Hawley.  Unusually for the time, all the children survived to adulthood.

Leonard Rupert Clark

Gladys had 5 brothers in total, and 4 of them would see active service in World War 2.  Her 5th brother, Norman William Clark, was tragically killed at the age of 20 in a shark attack (see my next #52ancestors post 'Unlucky').

For a family with 4 brothers serving in the war, they were extremely lucky to see all 4 come home safely.  Mostly they saw active service in the Middle East, with 3 surviving the siege of Tobruk - brothers David, Leonard and Russel.  Gladys' eldest son, my uncle David Pummeroy, also served in World War 2, a pilot in the Air Force.  He would also return home uninjured.
Lucky indeed.

April WDYTYA

The April issue of Who Do You Think  You Are magazine is out now and available digitally from Campaspe Library.

Inside this month's issue :

• 1939 register
  Audrey Collins explains how to get the most out of this 20th-century resource
• Taking flight
  Jayne Shrimpton celebrates the women who kept the RAF flying in two world wars
• Spring-clean your family research
  Claire Vaughan reveals some tips and tricks to refresh your family tree
• Reader story
  Gordon Martin discovers an unusual ancestor who fought at Trafalgar
• Country house brewing
  Rachel Conroy reveals how our 18th century ancestors enjoyed a drink of beer
• Plus...
  The best websites for tracing medical ancestors; the lives of ancestors who worked as locksmiths; exploring Scottish church records; and more...
   

Week 10 - Strong Woman - 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

The prompt for Week 10 of #52ancestors is 'Strong Woman', and looking through my family tree there are many strong women (and men) to choose from.  My focus, however, is my grandmother Rosa May Green (nee Pike).
Rosa May was born on the 27th December 1880 in Suffolk - her parents were Henry Arthur Pike and Sarah Jane (Hart).  Her father Henry was a miller and corn merchant in the Rattlesden and Gedding areas, and she had one brother Percy (who also left England, emigrating to Canada) and four sisters.  She married Frank Walter Noble Green in Fordham, Essex on 10 October 1907 at the age of 26, and the couple promptly emigrated to Australia, arriving in Melbourne on the 1st December 1907.  Rosa May never returned to England and never saw her parents or siblings again.

Frank and Rosa Green with Frank Jr, Collingwood, 1908

The family grew quickly and Rosa gave birth to 10 children over the next 20 years, with eldest child Frank Jr born 2nd May 1908 and youngest Marjory born 28th March 1928.  The two eldest children were born in Collingwood but after that the family moved to the country and the younger 8 children were born around Mildura and Red Cliffs.  They moved fairly frequently around Victoria, farming on a number of different properties, and often struggling to make ends meet.

Rosa May Green (Pike) later in life

 Rosa, like so many before her, must have been a strong woman to follow her new husband to the other side of the world to start a new life in Australia, adjusting to the heat and isolation and strangeness of her new home.  Rosa died on the 18th November 1965 at the age of 84 in Leongatha, several years before I was born, but she lived to see all her 10 children grow to adulthood and had a total of 23 grandchildren.

WW1 Service Scrapbooks

Personal stories and first-hand experiences of World War I nurses are now available free online via a new website launched by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN).  The project was funded by a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, and brings together the RCN’s collection of scrapbooks, diaries and photo albums belonging to nurses who served during the First World War.

Image from the pages of the Royal College of Nursing's Service Scrapbooks

Service scrapbooks showcases the stories of nine nurses and one VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment), just a few of the over 15,000 nurses who served during the First World War as part of the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service and the Territorial Force Nursing Service (TFNS). The project has digitised, transcribed and researched nearly 2,000 pages of photographs, poems, diary entries and illustrations, ranging from 1909 – 1919.
It reveals the experiences of nurses who travelled as far as Greece and Italy to work in military hospitals or occupied the halls of Oxford University and tin huts in the New Forest, whilst treating wounded men who had returned from the frontline. The scrapbooks also contain paintings, sketches and poetry by the soldiers and officers that they cared for, offering a unique perspective of daily hospital life.
This collection brings their history into the digital age and shines a light on the unsung heroes of the nursing profession.

Who Do You Think You Are Magazine

The March issue of Who Do You Think You Are magazine is out, and the digital version available free to all Campaspe Library members via RB Digital.

Inside this month's issue

• Ancestry & Findmypast tested
  Find out which website is best for your research with Chris Paton's 13-page guide
• From rags to riches
  Ed Dutton explains how your forebears could step up - and slip down - the social ladder
• Reader story
  Edward Knowles reveals how a shared passion for genealogy introduced him to a network of kin he never knew he had
• Learning disabilities and Victorian asylums
  Michelle Higgs reveals how care of adults and children with learning disabilities improved during the 19th century
• Eureka moment
  Tim Butters recalls how he tracked down his mother-in-law's family cottage in Ireland
• Plus...
  The best websites for tracing ancestors in India; the lives of ancestors who worked as antique dealers; exploring settlements and removals; and more...