Look History in the Eye Episode 8

The Kamarooka panther, episode 8 of the podcast series Look History in the Eye is about the 1907 sighting of a creature known as the 'Kamarooka Panther'.

 The big cat was first spotted by sisters Alheith and Trine Christensen and made headlines from Bendigo to Melbourne, and right across the State.

In this episode, Bendigo Regional Archives Centre's Desiree Pettit-Keating delves into Public Record Office Victoria and Bendigo Regional Archives records to tell the story of the Christensen family, their life just outside of Bendigo, and their strange encounter with this mysterious creature. 

The daughters of Scandinavian farmers, a look in the PROV archives shows that both Alheith and Trine (along with a third sister and a brother) were school teachers. 

Alheith started as a teacher in 1892, becoming certified in 1898; the inspector’s reports (found in the Teacher Records as above) describe her as “most careful and painstaking”, a “very good teacher”, “rigorous” and “thoughtful and intelligent”, while Trine, starting later in 1898, is noted by inspectors as careful and hard working.

They were aged 23 and 29 when they encountered the Kamarooka panther in January of 1907. A sighting taken most seriously since it came from such well-respected and well-educated women. 

Episode 8: The Kamarooka Panther 

Duration: 17min

By Tara Oldfield and Public Record Office Victoria

The Future of Trove

Early in January, I posted that the future of Trove, the National Library of Australia’s public digital archives, is in doubt with just months funding left.

The Society of Australian Genealogists has started a petition asking the Federal Government to fully fund Trove.  The petition states -

"Trove is an online archive that provides access to a huge range of archives free to all Australians. It is the memory house for the nation and imperative for researchers, genealogists, family historians and students. It receives 20 million hits a year and is a vital part of Australian heritage. Currently, funding for Trove expires in July 2023.

We therefore ask the House to fully fund Trove so that the nation's memories can be accessed by all Australians and provides them with the opportunity to understand and know our own history."

The petition already has over 500 signatures and runs until 22 February.  So please click on the link and add your signature to keep this wonderful resource available and free for all.

New Records on FamilySearch

This week (23 January 2023) explore 3.2 million new records on FamilySearch. These include new record sets for the Ukraine (Cherkasy, Mykolaiv, Poltava, and Zaporizhzhia) and thousands of new records added to the United States Bureau of Land Management Tract Books, and expanded collections for Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Germany, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, S Africa, and countries all over the world. 

Two completely new record sets have also been added this week for the United Kingdom : Military Pension and Service Records (911,344 records) and Service Records and British India Office, Births and Baptisms (713,850 records).

Other record sets added in December/January include :

• Royal Air Force Service Records, 1912-1945 - 342,823 records
• Indexes to Service Records of Volunteer Soldiers, 1784-1858, 1899-1901 - 49,921 records
• France, Manche, Parish and Civil Registration, 1546-1912 - 1,731,181 records
• France, Ardennes, Parish and Civil Registration, 1585-1892 - 2,242,305 records
• Germany, Württemberg, Catholic and Lutheran Church Records, 1818-1915 - 29,735 records
• Belgium, Antwerp, Civil Registration and Church Records, 1803-1890 - 126,709 records
• Poland, Church Books, 1568-1990 - 9,170,277 records
• Belgium, Liège, Church and Civil Registration, 1590-1947 - 1,245,544 records
• Plus many more
  

Settling an Estate

As I continue to peruse old newspapers, I have found that estate sales after the death of an ancestor can provide a huge amount of information about where and how they lived.  The sale of a house and land was often advertised in the newspapers, with a quite clear description of the estate being sold.  It would often also list the executors of the estate as well.

Advertised in the Ipswich Journal Saturday 6 March 1830 was the estate of William Boggis.  The sale included not only the house in which William himself lived, but also several other dwellings - with the current occupiers listed - and a small woodland.

Another article in 1842 described the two day sale of the estate of William Hart.  The first days sale included farm stock and equipment, while Day 2 featured household goods and furniture.  All are described in some detail and mention is made of catalogues of the sale being available.  I do find it quite disconcerting reading the advertisement for the sale of 'live and dead farming stock'.

In the News

I was very excited at Christmas to receive a gift of a 3 month subscription to the British Newspaper Archive, and have been spending quite a bit of my free time since happily researching.  The variety of articles I am uncovering is incredible, expanding and enriching my knowledge of my ancestors' lives.  Below are a few of the gems I have uncovered.

During my previous research I already knew Christopher Prentice worked as a Water Bailiff.  I hadn't know this was an elected position until I found the article above, which was placed in the Ipswich Journal on Saturday 12 September 1778 thanking those who had elected him to the position for their trust.

6 years later Christopher was standing for election to the Water Bailiff position again, and took out another notice in the Ipswich Journal applying for re-election.

In the same newspaper in 1796 another ancestor, William Hart, gave notice to the public that he had taken over running the Fleece Inn in Boxford, and hoped to continue to serve the public there.  

 

Trove Tricks

Any long-term reader of this blog will know how much I love Trove.  Over the years I have spent a lot of time researching the site, the newspapers and gazettes especially, and found a great deal of information about various ancestors and their lives.  And all available free for anyone.

I had thought I was a fairly adept user of the Trove search facility and knew many of the tips and tricks for constructing searches : 

• Phrase searches  
• Enclose search terms in quotes, eg:  
• “James Clark"will find only articles with those words, together, in that order. 
  
• Wildcard searches 
• Specify wild cards or truncate word endings with an * , eg: 
• math*  will find math, maths, mathematics, mathematical etc
• Boolean searches 
• Use AND, OR and NOT and brackets to create boolean expressions. You can use a minus sign next to the word in place of NOT, eg: 
• "South Australia" AND (elections OR politics) NOT (Adelaide OR Kingston)  
• “Moreton Bay" -Brisbane

I use the phrase search especially frequently to find articles about my ancestors, but this search has a weakness.  Just searching James Clark will find any article with both words anywhere in the article.  The words can be several lines away from each other and thus returns a lot of irrelevant results.  Using the phrase search is much more exact, but it will miss out on a number of relevant articles as well.  My ancestor James Clark was often referred to using his middle name as well - James Nicholas Clark.  Researching all three names as a phrase returns different results, as does using initials, surname first, and so on.  So what phrase searches do I need to do to cover all the bases?  "James Clark", "James Nicholas Clark", "James N. Clark", "J T Clark", "Clark, James", "Clark, J T" - they all return different matches.

What I did not know until very recently, however, was the tilde symbol and how it could be used when searching Trove.

• Near searches
• Use the tilde symbol to find words close to each other
• "James Clark"~2 will find the words James and Clark within two words of each other in any order
  

So searching "James Clark"~2 will find "James Clark", "James Nicholas Clark", "James N. Clark", and "Clark, James" all in one search.  "J Clark"~2 will find "J Clark", "J T Clark", "Clark, J T".  

Using the various search methods certainly makes better use of my time and helps me be more efficient in my searching, and knowing about the tilde search is a wonderful addition to my skills.  It also makes me wonder what other search tricks I'm missing from my toolbox then I search Trove - and all the other databases out there that I use.

Really Useful Podcasts Season 2 Episode 3

The Family History Federation has now launched Season 2, Episode 3 of its new series of Really Useful Podcasts. 

 

This episode focuses on Talking to Relatives.  The website describes it : 

One of the most rewarding things we can do as genealogists is to talk about our family history with relatives. We discuss approaching family members for their knowledge as well as sharing findings with our families.

Joe is joined by Kelly Cornwell, professional genealogist, speaker and blogger https://whoamifamilytreeresearch.co.uk, Mish Holman, professional genealogist and blogger https://theswancircle.co.uk and https://www.familyhistorygifts.co.uk and Jane Hough, family historian and blogger https://www.allthosebefore.org.uk Andrew Martin, family historian, cataloguer, digital archivist and host of The Family Histories Podcast https://li.sten.to/familyhistoriespodcast https://www.familytreeuk.co.uk