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.

52 Weeks of Genealogy - Week 2 - Internal Migration

Shauna has chosen Internal Migration as her topic for Week 2 and tells us "technically internal migration is not a category of records but it is such an important part of our family history research as our ancestors moved around a lot more than we think. Many did not just come to Australia and stay in the one place."
My maternal great-grandfather's surname was Clark (always a challenge to research) and for several years the family's immigration and early years in Australia eluded me.  My Great-grandfather James Nicholas Clark (pictured left at his wedding to Pricilla Mulholland) was born in Bristol and emigrated to Australia with his parents and older brother as a young child.  My mistake was assuming (never assume - how many times are we told that??  NEVER assume) that as the family settled in Victoria, that was where they started their lives in Australia. 
Wrong.  Assume makes an ASS of U and ME.
It was mostly by chance that I discovered one of James Nicholas's siblings was born in Port Sorrell, Tasmania.  A little further research and I found the family lived in Port Sorrell for several years and six children were born there before the entire family crossed to Victoria.  By not looking in the right place I had missed all that information.
My fathers parents married in England before coming to Australia in 1909, starting their Australian lives in Collingwood before moving all over Victoria, including stops in Narre Warren, Bambill, Mildura and Clyde.  While they did stay in Victoria their travels covered a large protion of the state and tracking them through the electoral rolls and other records has been quite an exercise.
Like Shauna, I have found making a map and  timeline to follow my ancestors has helped enormously, as they were a much more mobile lot than I had previously realised.
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.

52 Weeks of Genealogy - Week 1 - Military Medals

I'm finally going back and trying to complete the first few weeks of Shauna's challenge, and her topic for Week 1 was Military Medals.  I have several ancestors who fought in World War 1 and 2, but I have little idea of the medals they were awarded.  I do know my family was extremely fortunate to have so few losses during the wars - I have a total of 5 uncles and 11 great-uncles who fought, plus my father, and the only casualty we have was my Uncle James who was in the Merchant Navy and drowned in an accident in Argentina.  3 Rats of Tobruk, a bomber pilot based in New Guinea, others stationed all over the world and most made it home very little the worse for wear.  We were indeed very fortunate.
My father tried to enlist in WW2 underage and was sent home, back to the farm to work with his father and third brother Les.  His two older brothers Frank and Ernest (Squib) had both enlisted and were overseas - Dad saw it as his chance to travel and do his bit and went back when he turned 18, despite working on the land and therefore being essential services.  He worked in Stores in the Air Force and spent time in Townsville and Darwin before the war ended - he never made it out of Australia.  I have my father's military record but he never claimed his medal, saying that as he never actually fought he felt he had not earned it. 
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.

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) website has undergone a major revamp. Features include a brand new Discover 14-18 subsite to help researchers plan visits to CWGC cemeteries, as well as the addition of 300,000 casualty records from the First World War. Although the organisation states that the updates may cause some initial disruption, all of the new features appear to be up and running as of 10 July 2014.

CWGC new digital services include:-

• The launch of the Discover 14-18 website - to help people visit the site and understand their history;
• The launch of our First World War casualty archive documents online;
• and enhancements to  Search Our Records.

52 Weeks of Genealogy - Week 21 - Obituaries

Shauna has chosen Obituaries as the topic for Week 21.  She tells us that "obituaries may have information that is not found in official documents so it is definitely worth spending some time to see if something appeared in the local newspaper after a person’s death."  Certainly the ongoing work done by Trove makes finding obituaries of our Australian ancestors much easier, and the various overseas newspaper digitisation projects make searching overseas ancestors possible.

I have had the good luck to obtain several obituaries for various ancestors, including my great grandmother Isabella Mary Green (nee Argent) shown here on the right.  Not only does the article include family details for Isabella but also lists the chief mourners at her funeral and all those who sent floral tributes.  It also provides me with her cause of death, which was something I had not known until I found this article.  Even the name of the rector is included.  As a long-time resident and the wife of a major landholder in a small Essex community Isabella was a well known member of the village and several articles appeared in the local paper regarding her death.  While the quality of the digitisation is not the best (as all too often they are not) the obituary is still quite readable and is wonderful to have.

I also have the obituary for Miss Emma Noble Argent, who was Isabella's sister. 
There were 5 Argent children in this particular family - John Thompson Argent was born in January 1848 and died in November 1907 (59 years old), Emma was born in September 1849 and died in March 1935 age 85, Ada was born in 1851 and died December 1929 at 78, Constance was born July 1857 and died December 1929 age 72 and Isabella was born June 1858 and died March 1936, age 77.  Neither Emma nor her sister Ada married, but spent their lives living 'on indepentant means' and doing local church work.  Her obituary is also very interesting to read, again providing family details, the chief mourners and a list of those who sent flowers.

Re-reading through these obituaries this week has reminded me of the lives these women lived and the roles they played in village life.  If you are fortunate enough to find obituaries for your ancestors they can be another source of information for detail about their lives.

As more and more newspapers are being digitised, searching for obituaries for your ancestors becomes ever easier, so don't forget this valuable resource.

National Library of Wales

The National Library of Wales has digitized an additional 100,000 historic newspaper pages in the month of June for their website Welsh Newspapers Online. The website now consists of some 725,000 pages and 7.6 million articles from over 100 newspapers.  Newspaper dates range from 1804 to 1919. The website can be searched by keyword and category (such as family notices, advertisements, news or detailed lists). Alternatively, the historic newspapers can be browsed by title and date. Access is free. [Welsh Newspapers Online]

52 Weeks of Genealogy - Week 20 - Mining Records

Shauna has chosen Mining Records for her topic in Week 20 of her 52 Weeks of Genealogical Records.  This is a topic about which I know little as none of my ancestors seem to have caught the mining bug and followed the gold - they were mostly farmers with a scatter of trades such as carpenters, plasterers and millers.  My father's family didn't arrive in Australia until a few years before the First World War, so they missed the major gold rushes in Australia completely.
Reflecting upon her own mining ancestors, Shauna tells us that "although miners can be difficult to trace because they moved around, with persistence you can trace them through certificates, children’s school records, newspapers, hospital records and so on. If you cannot find anything on a miner direct, try other family members including their wife, children and don’t forget siblings. Follow up all clues and hopefully you will learn more about your mining ancestors."
Thanks Shauna, I look forward to next weeks topic.

Discovering ANZACs

The National Archives of Australia and Archives New Zealand are working together to build a new website, Discovering Anzacs. This website will have a unique profile of every Anzac who enlisted in World War I, linked to their service record. You can help tell the story of Australia and New Zealand during the war by building on profiles and adding your own family stories, photos or details of their service. The Discovering Anzacs website will be launched mid-July.
The site is asking for help to build a very personal history of World War I and at the same time, discover what happened in Australia and New Zealand during the war. Subscribe to Their mailing list to keep up-to-date on the development of the Discovering Anzacs website.

Links on the webpage allow you to transcribe records to make them more searchable, help identify soldiers, and add your tribute to those who served in World War I.  You can find your relative, tell your family story, and upload personal photographs and letters.

Keep your eyes on the site as it develops and contribute details about your WW1 soldiers to help build this fantastic resource which is another of the wonderful projects commemorating 100 years since the start of World War 1.

52 Weeks of Genealogy - Week 19 - Family Bibles

Shauna has chosen family bibles for this week's topic.  She tells us that "family bibles can be useful resources for family history and they can connect us through the generations. If you are lucky enough to have one in the family records, why not think about why and how it has come to be in the family and are there plans in place to ensure that it continues to be handed down the generations still to come."
For all my family I have only ever seen information copied from one bible, which was given to me by a relative on my father's side of my family.  She photocopied the pages for me several years ago, and they were a great resource to have.  Her grandmother had spent some time carefully noting on its blank pages not just family births, marriages and deaths but also significant family events such as major travels, accidents and illnesses, and children leaving home to find work elsewhere.  Sadly she has since passed away and I have no idea what became of the old bible - I hope someone is cherishing it.

52 Weeks of Genealogy - Week 18 - Almanacs

Shauna has chosen Almanacs as her topic for Week 18.  Shauna loves almanacs "as they are similar to directories and newspapers with lots of different information, lists of names and interesting advertisements. Once upon a time we might have used print copies if they were not too fragile or more likely it would have been microfiche or microfilm. This made them less easy to use (in my opinion) but now we have many almanacs digitised by Archive Digital Books Australasia for sale or in libraries, some are available through findmypast.com.au and some are even online for free."

Personally I have had mixed success searching almanacs for information on my family history, but have occasionally come across a reference to a family member or an advertisement for a business.  These are always exciting to find but almanacs can also be another way to find out about local and national events that influenced an ancestors life.  Almanacs are a resource not to be dismissed and, as Shauna pointed out, now that many are digitised and available through various sources they are even easier to use than ever.  Living in the country I find anything available online is a big boost to me as getting into the city to access the records offices and repositories is a challenge.

Thanks Shauna, it will be interesting to see what you have chosen for us next time.

What's in a Name?

At least for purposes of research, just about every genealogist rues the ancestor whose last name is common, and therefore hard to trace, and rejoices in their ancestors with more unusual names. While an unusual surname undeniably can make genealogical research easier, it doesn’t corner the market on interesting and informative origins.  In Western Europe, surnames first came about in Medieval times as civilizations grew larger and it became necessary to distinguish between people.
Sometimes, names were based on occupation: a blacksmith may have been “John le Smith” (John the Smith) which became, over the generations, “Smith,” and a person named Appleby lived by or tended the apple orchard. Celebrity Robin Leach’s ancestor was probably a physician (because in medieval times, physicians used leeches to bleed people). Actor Christopher Reeve’s ancestor, the one to first take the surname, was most likely a sheriff, and Sarah Jessica Parker’s early medieval ancestor probably tended a park.Other surnames were based on location: an Acker, which comes from “acre,” lived near a field, and a Hall lived in or worked in a hall of a Medieval nobleman’s house. And it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out what a forebear named Young or Strong or Gray looked like.Higher social status surnames are more rare today — how many Rothschilds (from the German “red shield”) did you go to school with? — and lower status ones fairly common. Lower social status people were also sometimes given unfortunate names by others, such as “Tew” (Welsh for “fat”) or “Dullard,” which means a hard or conceited man.And in many parts of the world surnames derived from men’s names. A person named Robertson is descended from someone who was the “son of Robert,” and a MacDonald is from a Scottish “son of Donald.” Armenian names of this sort generally end in “-ian,” Polish ones in “-ski,” and Irish ones are put together a little differently, starting with the prefix “Fitz-.”In Spanish-speaking parts of the world, people often take both their mother and father’s surnames. And some families still use family or “house” names that are not surnames at all, like the royal Windsors or Plantagenets.Asian surnames have different stories. Most of the approximately 100,000 Japanese surnames in use today only date from 1868 and the Meiji Restoration, when surnames were mandated for the first time. There are just a few hundred common Chinese surnames, and 20 of them (which reflect an entire clan or were adopted by nobles) are shared by half the population. There are about 250 Korean surnames, three of them comprising almost half the Korean population, and just about 100 Vietnamese ones, with three making up 60 percent of all names in that country.More than 2,600 members at the UK-based Guild of One-Name Studies devote their genealogical research to about 8,400 “one-name studies,” meaning they study everything known about a particular surname, whether the people they research are related biologically or linked to other family trees they are studying. Focusing in on a family surname can be a useful way to break through a genealogical brick wall, and most guild members are easy to reach and willing to share information (generally they ask, in return, for you to share your data on a name).
My own ancestry is a mix of very common surnames (Green, Clark), slightly less common (Argent, Pike, Hart, Mulholland) and some more unusual ones (Pummeroy, Beseler, Farckens, McGoverin).  Each presents their own challenges.
Thanks to Ancestry for their blog entry on surnames.