QFHS Snippets - November 2012 Volume 12, No. 11
QFHS Snippets - November 2012 Volume 12, No. 11
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Urgent Notice
The QFHS library will be closed all day on Saturday 10 November
2012 while electrical work is being carried out on the industrial
estate.
Join us at our last general meeting for this year on 21 November.
QFHS members can search the many new records at Findmypast.com.au for free at our library.
Learn how to find your ancestors when indexing mistakes occur.
Share your suggestions and articles to us at: snippets@qfhs.org.au
Happy researching!
Queensland State Archives will be open to the public on the
second Saturday of every calendar month from 9am to 4:30pm. The
next three Saturday opening dates are:
Queensland State Archives are located at 435 Compton Road,
Runcorn, Queensland.
For more details, go to: http://bit.ly/H4ubPc
For those who find it difficult to get to the Queensland State
Archives (QSA), there is a taxi service for researchers available
every Tuesday.
Information can be obtained at: http://bit.ly/JzSy5n
To book taxi travel to QSA, phone (07) 3131 7777.
Learn about Queensland State Archives' collection and how best to find the information you are seeking. This seminar, presented by an experienced reference archivist on Saturday, 10 November from 9 am to 11 am and Tuesday, 4 December from 2 pm to 4 pm, will provide you with the basics you need to start your research at Queensland State Archives. The seminar includes a short tour. Entry is free. To book your spot, call (07) 3131 7777.
If you are unable to attend this seminar, you may view the
Getting Started PowerPoint presentation at: http://bit.ly/TnvKrG
Queensland State Archives will be closed for the Christmas/New
Year break from Tuesday, 25 December 2012 and will reopen on
Wednesday, 2 January 2013.
New content of the Assisted Immigration 1848-1912 index is now
available at: http://bit.ly/P0INTP
Explore Queensland State Archives' Immigration indexes webpage
for access to more immigration resources at: http://bit.ly/QVkSDH
The group's next general meeting will be held on Thursday, 15
November commencing at 1:30pm. Guest speaker will be Dr Jennifer
Harrison, an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of History,
Philosophy, Religion & Classics at the University of
Queensland. Dr Harrison's topic will be "Irish Immigration to
Queensland".
Visitors are always welcome from 1:30pm on the third Thursday of
the month at our general meetings in the Guide Hut in Arthur
Street, Caloundra. Further information on the group's calendar,
resources, journal and activities is available on our website at:
http://www.caloundrafamilyhistory.org.au/
For more information, contact Valerie on (07) 5437 3879, Roz on
(07) 5493 1197; June on (07) 5493 2679, or email: caloundrafamilyres@y7mail.com
On Sunday, 25 November 2012: After a very short AGM at 2 pm, we will see a film - Weapons of the Spirit - about French Protestants saving Jewish refugees in WW2.
Everyone is welcome. Come by car, train, bus or ferry. There is
plenty of free parking available. We meet in the room next to the
library on the top floor of Toowong Village Shopping Centre at 9
Sherwood Road, Toowong. Entrance is by gold coin donation. Join us
for a 'cuppa' afterwards.
The Queensland Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages is
conducting an online survey, prior to introducing a new online
ordering service which will make it easier to purchase historical
certificates. The survey will take only a few minutes to complete.
No identifying information is requested and all responses are
treated as confidential.
Go to: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RBDM2012
Answers to questions raised by a recent customer survey are on
the Queensland Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages Web site.
Read what the Registry says about being able to download digital
images of historical registers at: http://bit.ly/TYSFQF
Facebook users can "Like" us to receive up-to-date information
at: http://www.facebook.com/RyersonIndex
The Ryerson Index remains the same with access via the website at:
http://www.ryersonindex.org/
with a link to Facebook on the homepage.
The above Society is interested in family history research in an
area bounded by Kendall, Rawdon Vale, Booral, Bulahdelah and
Forster on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales.
The latest edition of their Fig Tree newsletter is available for
download at: http://www.manningwallambafhs.com.au/newsletter.htm
Colonial Secretary Papers, Convict Indexes, Deceased Estates,
Immigration and Shipping, and much more including Indexes Online:
Check it out at: http://www.records.nsw.gov.au/state-archives/indexes-online/indexes-online/
The mammoth index to Anglican Clergy in Australia, prepared by
the late Dr Ken Cable and his wife Leonie Cable, is now available
for searching online. The project covers 6570 clergy licensed in
Australia from 1788 to 31 December 1961; the date at which the
Church of England in Australia became the Anglican Church of
Australia. The aim was to compile a complete biographical and
career resume for every clergyman. Each entry provides both
biographical details as well as information on the individual's
'career' within the church.
The index was contained on thousands of hand-written cards and
has now been transcribed and is downloadable as a PDF document of
2826 pages in length at: http://anglicanhistory.org/aus/cci/
This site has over 120 pages of genealogy and family history
advice, indexes and services, especially for Queensland - but much
of the advice also applies elsewhere, and the indexes include many
people from other States and countries.
More than 51,000 names are listed, mainly from Qld State Archives
records and unusual and neglected sources that are valuable for
problem solving. See http://www.judywebster.com.au/
Search 528 databases from all Australasian jurisdictions via the
Australasian Legal Information Institute web site at: http://www.austlii.edu.au/
This online index is worthy of investigation at: http://www.sag.org.au/collections/online-manuscript-index.html
Findmypast.com.au has just launched 56 million new records
covering Australia and New Zealand. This brings the total to over
135 million records for people searching their Australian and New
Zealand family history.
Many of the records just released are invaluable resources to
those researching their family history. One of these is electoral
rolls which are an alternative to census records, providing
important information about ancestors. Many other significant
records have also been released such as police and government
gazettes, directories and even some unique records such as
numerous runs of Radio Call.
Access is available via subscription or for free at the Gaythorne
library at: http://www.findmypast.com.au/
Use the Archives Hub to find unique sources for your research.
The Archives Hub enables you to search across a wealth of archives
held at over 220 institutions in England, Scotland and Wales.
Check it out at: http://archiveshub.ac.uk/
Documents Online was switched off from 30 September 2012, along
with three other features of the website and will be replaced by
Discovery: Your Archives, Equity Pleadings Database and Person
Search. They have integrated the digital document delivery
services provided by Documents Online into Discovery, making it
easier for users to search records and download copies (where
available), all in one place. Discovery also features an image
viewer, which means that users can see a low-resolution version of
a document before paying to download it.
Check it out at: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/
Take the test on marriage Laws: http://bit.ly/ScBg4U
WW2 Dad's Army Service Records Now Available for Ancestry and Military Genealogy Searches Online. 40,000 World War 2 service records have been added to the Forces War Records database and are now available for military genealogy searches online at: http://www.forces-war-records.co.uk/Search/
These records contain data about Officers of the Home Guard, also fondly known as Dad's Army. Most Home Guard records are kept in the form of enrolment forms, recommendations for awards and cabinet papers by the Ministry of Defence and other institutions. Forces War Records is the only site to hold these records in digitised transcribed format, making the entire list of Officers of the Home Guard easy to search.
The Home Guard was operational from 1940 to 1944, and was set up
by the British Army during the Second World War. http://www.forces-war-records.co.uk/Ww2-Records/
The nickname "Dad's Army" was due to the average age of the local
volunteers who signed up for The Home Guard, who were ineligible
for military service, usually because of their age. Originally
called "Local Defence Volunteers" or LDV, the Home Guard's role
was to defend British coastal areas, airfields, factories and
explosives stores in the case of invasion by German forces and
their allies.
Connected Histories is a not-for-profit project. It brings
together a range of digital British history resources covering
1500-1900; with a single search that allows sophisticated
searching of names, places and dates.
Currently accessed are 15 major resources including: Old Bailey
proceedings, London Lives (1690-1890), Clergy of the Church of
England, British newspapers (1600-1900) and convict transportation
registers.
Check it out at: http://www.connectedhistories.org/
This archive will eventually see almost 20,000 portraits
accessible online, along with the basic information that is
available identifying the individuals. You may be lucky and find a
family member or be able to put a name to a photograph.
Go to: http://www.scottishhighlanderphotoarchive.co.uk/
The brown and faded documents that lay on a table at the local
library have caused a buzz of excitement in the Pictou County
Roots Society, which hopes to fill in the gaps of Nova Scotia's
history with these funeral home records that date back to the
1800s. "These approximately 15 books and plans, they're important
because the death records that are on file with the government
office and the records that you can get online for the death
records, there's a large gap of 31 years," said society member and
author of Pictou County history books Clyde Macdonald. "So between
1877 and 1908, those death records aren't available.
Read the full article, at: http://www.genealogyblog.com/?p=22174
Genealogists have raised concerns about moves to resurrect the Privacy Bill 2006 in the Irish Seanad, the upper house of the Oireachtas (the Irish parliament). The genealogists say the proposed legislation could restrict access to records for genealogical or biographical research.
Those in charge of such records could "arbitrarily and
unnecessarily restrict or deny access" to vital records on the
grounds that access could infringe privacy rights under the Bill.
It is also possible, "through fear of litigation", the legislation
could hamper the publication of biographies, especially if such
publications contained data obtained from public registers. You
can read more in an article at: http://bit.ly/QQIKGR
You can read the Privacy Bill at: http://bit.ly/VbGUGs
as it was restored to the Order Paper of Seanad Éireann on
25 September 2012 by the Leader of the Senate, Senator Maurice
Cummins - see: http://bit.ly/TUYnxb
- no. 9 on the Order Paper.
The Great Hunger years of Ireland were from 1845 to 1852. 1847
was the worst year of all. Now Quinnipiac University in Hamden,
Connecticut is set to unveil the first Great Hunger museum which
shows the history of that terrible era through art and artifacts.
The legacy of Black 47, as it came to be called, is still being
felt in myriad of ways in Irish society and culture. By 1852 the
Irish population was cut in half; by 1900 it was cut in three
quarters. During the famine the British government never closed
the ports or reduced the tariffs. Instead they shipped out food
that could have saved the starving.
You can read more in an article at: http://bit.ly/RXRFv3
The September edition of Irish Lives Remembered can be downloaded
for free at: http://interactivepdf.uniflip.com/2/71043/264064/pub/
Previous editions are available at: http://www.irishlivesremembered.ie/magazines.html
More details are available at RootsChat.Com.
To view, go to: http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=604843
As part of ProQuest's Historical Newspaper collection, the
archive of The Globe and Mail will be cross-searchable with a
worldwide selection of both major and specialty newspapers - from
The New York Times and The Guardian to the Chicago Defender and
the Jerusalem Post - significantly enhancing productivity and
efficiency of researchers and journalists exploring historical
events.
Access is available via subscription at: http://bit.ly/pXVdt
If you have reason to believe your ancestor was ever an employee
of the United States Federal Government, there are some special
records that should confirm that fact.
You can read more in an article at: http://www.genealogyblog.com/?p=22249
The remains of 80 bodies first laid to rest more than 150 years
ago were recently reburied as part of renovations by Onondaga, New
York Community College. The bodies of homeless adults and children
were buried from 1826 to 1840 near the former Onondaga County
Poorhouse on Onondaga Hill. When the archaeology team began
digging in the winter of 2010, they found bones, rusty nails,
coffin wood and some hardware, including metal handles.
You can read more in an article at: http://bit.ly/Q0Bgls
Samuel Davis Agin, who served two tours of duty in the Civil War,
was recognised on 29 September, in the Princeton, New Jersey
Cemetery, after having been buried there for nearly a hundred
years in an unmarked grave. His story was brought to light by two
distant cousins who discovered their common ancestor, and each
other, through online research.
You can read more in an article at: http://bit.ly/SwaLDn
A Civil War soldier depicted in a painting hanging in the
Georgetown Neighborhood Library's Peabody Room has now been
identified as Sergeant Hiram Peck. Even better, traditional
genealogy research has added much more information about Sergeant
Peck's life.
You can read the interesting story at: http://bit.ly/W8rynO
Officials in southern Idaho's Lincoln County are taking steps to deal with a rash of paper-eating insects blamed for destroying a collection of historical documents. Volunteers discovered the damage as they were working to digitise old paper records, including court judgments, birth certificates, marriage licences, land deeds and permits. The records - some dating back to the 1930s - were all kept in the vault below the county courthouse.
You can read the complete, sad story in an article at: http://bit.ly/SJSGBJ
The Royal Purple, K-State's yearbook, has been digitised. Every edition from 1926 to 2009 will now be available online. The goal of the digitising project is to make yearbooks that are no longer in print accessible to potential readers. The yearbooks can be found at: http://archive.org/details/kansasstateuniversitylibrariesyearbooks/
More information on the project is available at: http://www.genealogyblog.com/?p=22157
Millions of a western New York county's birth and death records, adoption papers, investigative files and real estate records - some dating back more than 200 years - will be moved into new storage space, and out of a leaky old building where they're in danger of being lost.
Niagara County lawmakers recently voted to lease 28,000 square
feet of storage space in Newfane. Many county records are
currently stored at a facility in Lockport that was largely
abandoned 10 years ago.
For more details, go to: http://bit.ly/PQIiJ1
The North Dakota State University Archives (NDSU) is offering you
a glimpse of how Fargo looked a century ago. A new project by the
North Dakota State University Archives is combining history with
geography through Historypin.com. The dynamic website allows users
to "pin" historic photographs onto a Google map.
The site gives viewers the opportunity to see historic photographs
superimposed onto the current Google street view map, and compare
what present buildings looked like in the past. Historypin was
created to allow archives, libraries, schools and individuals from
around the world to share historic photos to tell the story of the
past.
So far, the NDSU Archives has uploaded five collections of
photographs ranging from 1876 to 2009. Additional collections will
be added over time to cover other parts of North Dakota.
Visit the Historypin Web page at: http://www.historypin.com/channels/view/id/12313037
Hundreds of items were recently auctioned off at Pot of Gold
Estate Liquidation in Avondale, Arizona. Some were worth thousands
of dollars, but none were more valuable than an 1864 family Bible.
Mary Marsh found it on the auction list and knew it couldn't just
go to the highest bidder.
Read the full article at: http://www.genealogyblog.com/?p=21996
For the first time ever in English, a rare look at an early
immigrant community as well as more than one thousand family names
will be available to historians and genealogists as a free, online
resource. The first ever English translation of Hugo Chotek's work
entitled Bohemian Settlers and Their Social Life in Cleveland,
Ohio, North America. Originally published in 1895 and written in
Czech, this 192 page book contains one of the most comprehensive
and detailed views of the early Czech immigrant community in
Cleveland, Ohio ever written and published.
The work is available to access at: http://OnwardToOurPast.com/
Did your European or Anglo-Indian ancestors live or work in India
or South Asia between 1600 and 1947? The Families In British India
Society (FIBIS) is a self-help organisation devoted to members
researching their ancestors and the background against which they
led their lives in 'British India'. It has a searchable database
which includes marriages, wills, newspaper articles, arrivals and
departures. This site can help your research.
You can search a database of more than 937,000 individual names
for free at: http://search.fibis.org/frontis/bin/index.php
WikiTree.com is now inviting all genealogists and family
historians to register for a free membership. Members are required
to volunteer and participate in the program and abide by an honour
code.
More details about the project are at: http://bit.ly/SL7ujN
WikiTree can be found at: http://www.WikiTree.com/
For the past 80 years and three generations, her family was
dominated by the birth of 10 boys. Then Ruby Knoll came into the
world on 7 September to the delight of a family desperate for a
feminine influence. The last female born to the Knoll family,
grandmother Anna, recently celebrated her 80th birthday.
Read more about Ruby at: http://bit.ly/X1XyZW
The Department of Genetics, University of Leicester is currently
undertaking a DNA project. This study is being carried by out by
Dr Turi King. He has carried out the sampling and genetic typing
of nearly 2500 men with ancestry in either the north of England or
Norway. The last few samples are just coming in and Turi
hopes to have the typing completed by Autumn of 2012 and then
start on the analysis.
More details about the project can be found at: http://bit.ly/Y33lxc
A 5 minute video from FamilySearch you might like to watch if you
have asked yourself: Why would I share what I've been researching
with others? Why would they care? How can I share my family
history?
Sharing research can answer questions, fill in gaps, connect
living relatives, and get others involved. See http://bit.ly/TUXTHj
Join FamilySearch indexing for its first video contest:
Genealogists Say "Thanks! Here's your chance to say thank you to
the indexers who have helped you find your ancestors. Create a
short video that is one minute or less to thank FamilySearch
indexers and arbitrators for helping to make records searchable
online. Highlight an ancestor you have found, or highlight someone
you know who has found an ancestor while searching on
FamilySearch.org, and express your gratitude to the indexers who
helped make it possible. Help indexers know their work matters!
For more information, go to: https://familysearch.org/blog/en/fsindexingvideocontest2012/
New collections are added each week to FamilySearch. Collections
that are marked with a camera indicate collections for which
digitised images are available. Collections marked with the term
'Browse Images' refer to the fact that the collection has not been
indexed yet but is available for browsing. These collections have
helps added to assist you in narrowing your search down to
specific times, places, and record types.
Go to: https://familysearch.org/search/collection/list/
When you get to this page, click on the 'Last Updated' link above
the collection dates.
Scott Phillips wrote a delightful piece which is available at: http://huff.to/QVjXDc
Genealogical researchers are name collectors. We collect names of
people and names of places. When a name of a person can be
connected to a name of a place and a time period, the research
really starts paying off. Here is an example. If you wanted to
find records for a James Johnson in America, how many
possibilities are there? From 1607, the date of the first
permanent English settlement in America at Jamestown, Virginia, to
2012 is 405 years. How many persons with the name James Johnson
have lived in America in 405 years? Clearly, we need to refine the
information if we want to find the right James Johnson.
Read the full article, at: http://www.genealogyblog.com/?p=22008
The following notes are those taken by Dawn Montgomery from the
presentation "FamilyTree: a New Addition to the FamilySearch
Family" by Paul Parton.
Top 5 websites for Family History were:
These statistics are available on Alexa.com.
What brings in traffic? 40% are looking at family trees and
60% looking at records.
Family trees are soon to be put on FamilySearch.org. It seems this
venture by FamilySearch is a direct result of the complaints one
sees almost daily, on different forums, of people 'stealing' from
family trees on Ancestry, and making no effort to correct
information they wrongly attach to their trees.
This is going through a testing stage at present, expected to be
available to public by end of 2012. It will be ALL PUBLIC trees,
no private trees. NO LIVING PEOPLE allowed. System used will
be SCOE (Source Centric Open Edit) which is how Wikipedia works.
Anything removed can be put back in place.
Should you decide to put your tree on FamilySearch.org, you will
be notified if your information is changed as long as you tick
'watch' when you upload. You will be notified by email which
will include name and contact details of person who changed.
Questions were raised as to how to prevent / correct people using
your information on their tree if it invalidates their tree.
Paul advised that there will be three levels of differences
solving:
He warned against getting 'My-tree-itis' - keep an open mind
regarding mistaken identities.
The occupant of the 90-year-old cottage had died in February.
Matthew Greenberg's job was to empty the home so it could be
demolished and its land divided into two parcels. His clients had
told him to rent a dumpster and throw away whatever he found
inside. But Matthew Greenberg couldn't bring himself to do that.
Inside the house was discovered at least a million maps. You can
read more in an article at: http://lat.ms/RbTxNs
See photos of the discovery at: http://lat.ms/R8tkRt
A new resource for genealogists and family historians worldwide
is now in Public Beta and open to everyone. Genealogy and Family
History Q&A is where you can go to ask questions about
genealogy and solve problems you are having in your research and
get answers fast from experts in the field and other genealogy
enthusiasts.
Check it out at: http://genealogy.stackexchange.com/
Travel writer Kyle Ellison recently wrote, "Perhaps it's the rise
in popularity of websites such as ancestry.com, but for some
reason 'genealogy tourism' seems to be on the rise. Despite the
fact that millions of families took the plunge to move to a
foreign land, their children many years down the road have not
relinquished the curiosity to learn more about where it is they
came from."
You can read Kyle Ellison's article at: http://aol.it/RwWqaI
Online genealogy company Ancestry.com, has been bought by European private equity firm Permira. The transaction, subject to stockholder approval and other closing conditions, is expected to close in January 2013.
There are no anticipated changes in Ancestry.com's operating
structure. Ancestry.com will remain headquartered in Provo, Utah,
with a continued large presence in San Francisco, Dublin, London
and other international markets.
Read more about the acquisition at: http://bit.ly/SxXAoZ
Do you need to obtain permission from cemetery owners before taking pictures of tombstones?
Writing in The Legal Genealogist blog, Judy Russell has written
an excellent article that is available at: http://bit.ly/XLmwL1
Genealogists have learned the hard way that census indexes are
often incomplete, or have names misspelled, names missing, or
other problems. For example, if you are researching for people
named Henry James or James Henry, you will learn to always check
for both the surname and given name when looking at census
indexes. Names such as these are prone to be reversed.
Lots to be learned from an article which can be found here: http://www.genealogyblog.com/?p=22566
A full-time detective
A thorough historian
An inveterate snoop
A confirmed diplomat
A keen observer
A hardened sceptic
An apt biographer
A qualified linguist
A part-time lawyer
A studious sociologist
An accurate reporter
An hieroglyphics expert,
AND . . .
A complete nut!