Australian Cemeteries

Great news!! Australian cemeteries now have a new home with their own domain.
http://www.australiancemeteries.com/
You may want to update your bookmarks, however if you go into the old ozgenonline.com/aust_cemeteries site, you will be transferred quickly to the new site. It looks just the same as the old one, but is much, much quicker, making it easier to use.

To forget one's ancestors is to be a brook without a source,a tree without a root.
Chinese Proverb

Letters of a Nation

As part of Australia Post's Letters of a Nation campaign, they have developed an online archive that will preserve all letter submissions and act as a resource tool for generations to come.

The Letter Archive can be searched via category e.g.Friendship/Mateship/Romance;
Migration; Family/Childhood/Children/Home; Culture/Arts; Humour; Sport;
Business/Commerce/Employment; Protest; Politics; War; Life events(births,deaths,marriages); Religion; Milestone events i.e. Federation, Bicentenary; Environment; Education; Health/Healthcare; Social trends/Change (movements, fashions); Science/Technology/Research/Innovation.

Or search Letter Archive via era..
1809-1849; 1850-1899; 1900-1909; 1910-1919; 1920-1930; 1930-1939; 1940-1949; 1950-1959; 1960-1969; 1970-1979; 1980-1989; 1990-1999; 2000-2009.

You can also submit your own letters to the site or subscribe for updates.

Example: A father's letter to his son after release from a POW camp.
Ron Castle, the son of a POW soldier in the Second World War, was Australia Post's Letters of a Nation campaign first submission.
The letter is written from Ron's father, Charles Castle to Ron telling him he looks forward to catching up on 'some great times, just you and I'. The letter is particularly poignant; because for fifteen months Charles' family did not know if he was dead or alive following a telegram advising that he was 'Missing in Action'.
As it was, Charles was actually a Prisoner of War soldier in Malaya throughout this time.
Ron submitted his letter to give recognition to his father and to his father's mates who were not as lucky as he was to return home to their families.

The Old Bailey

The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913 is a fully searchable on-line edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.

The Old Bailey, also known as Justice Hall, the Sessions House, and the Central Criminal Court, was named after the street in which it was located, just off Newgate Street and next to Newgate Prison, in the western part of the City of London. Over the centuries the building has been periodically remodelled and rebuilt in ways which both reflected and influenced the changing ways trials were carried out and reported.

This site also includes historical background covering policing, crimes tried, trial procedures, judges and juries, trial verdicts, and punishments. It provides important information to help the researcher understand proceedings, especially in the case of punishments. Defendants could be given more than one punishment, and the actual punishment a convict received often differed from that specified at their trial. It is worth searching later sessions by the name of the defendant using the “Personal Details” search page to see if the sentence was mitigated.

Because the actual punishment a convict received often differed from that specified at their trial, It is also possible to search separately for information about pardons or executions. Although this information was not consistently reported in the Proceedings, there are regular reports of pardons from 1739 until 1796 and of executions from 1743 until 1792. Additional evidence about whether (and how) punishments were carried out can be found within the Associated Records.

Note on Punishments: A large number of eighteenth-century statutes specified death as the penalty for minor property offences (the "bloody code"), meaning that the vast majority of the people tried at the Old Bailey could be sentenced to hang (one could be executed for stealing a handkerchief or a sheep). Nevertheless, judicial procedures prevented a blood bath by ensuring that sentences could be mitigated, or the charge redefined as a less serious offence.

Through partial verdicts, juries reduced the charges against many convicted defendants. Through the mechanisms of benefit of clergy and pardons many more defendants found guilty of a capital offence were spared the death penalty and sentenced instead to punishments such as branding, transportation, or imprisonment. Many received no punishment at all.

National Archives of Ireland

Researching your Irish Ancestry can be notoriously difficult, but the National Archives of Ireland holds a wealth of information, searchable on-line.
Unfortunately almost all the records acquired by the Public Record Office of Ireland before 1922 were destroyed by fire and explosion at the beginning of the Civil War in June 1922 and as a result, the material now held by the National Archives dates mainly from the 19th and 20th centuries, although there are a few surviving court and exchequer rolls dating to the early 14th century.
However they are still well worth visiting, as they also provide excellent guides to searching the archives and researching Irish family history
Some of the most frequently consulted archives:
Archives acquired from private sources
Census 1901
Census 1911
Chancery pleadings
Chief Secretary's Office Registered Papers
Church of Ireland parish registers
Convict Reference Files
Coroners' inquests
Dáil Éireann records
Departmental records
Famine Relief Commission records relating to the Famine
Ferguson manuscripts
Genealogical abstracts (Betham, Crosslé, Tenison Groves, Grove-White and Thrift)
General Prisons Board
Incumbered and Landed Estates Court rentals
Irish Record Commission calendars
Lodge's manuscripts
National School applications, registers and files (pre-1922)
Office of Public Works
Official Papers
Ordnance Survey
Outrage Reports
Probate records
Quit Rent Office
Rebellion Papers
Society of Friends Famine Papers
State of the Country Papers
Trade Union archives
Valuation Office and Boundary Survey records
Will books and grant books

York Assizes

York Reference Library has an on-line index to records of prisoners brought to trial at York Assizes 1785-1851. http://www.yorkfamilyhistory.org.uk/assizes.htm
The Library's records give quite a lot of detail and, in most cases, there are also the results of the trials. Some of these are published on this website. For those not published York Library offer a look-up service and you can contact them at reference.library@york.gov.uk
This index of over 8,000 names has been divided into alphabetical sections, as follows:
A - B; C - D; E - F; G - I; J - L; M - P; Q - S; T - V; W - Y

Records include ID number, Surname, Forename, Age, Place of Origin and Date.
However, pre-July 1800, ages were not given, and after this time, place of origin was generally not given. There are occasional gaps.
This index was kindly donated to the Society, in 2003, by Conrad Plowman

New Zealand now on-line

I had always been disappointed I could not check New Zealand Birth, Death and Marriages records on-line, however the Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Act 2008 allows the Register-General to now make historical information available. (http://www.bdm.govt.nz/)

This means that you can search for:
Births that occurred at least 100 years ago
Stillbirths that occurred at least 50 years ago
Marriages and eventually Civil Unions that occurred 80 years ago and
Deaths that occurred at least 50 years ago or the deceased's date of birth was at least 80 years ago.

You can use the link above, or go directly to the historical records database.

The site contains an excellent time line detailing the development of BDM records in New Zealand and further information about the records.

There are around 11 million births, deaths, marriage and civil union records.
Births Deaths and Marriages was originally part of the Colonial Office.
Births and deaths have been officially recorded since 1848.
Marriages have been recorded since 1854.
In 1911, it was required that Māori marriages be recorded.
In 1913, it was required that Māori birth and deaths be recorded.
Separate Māori and General registration systems were kept until 1961 although some Māori are registered in the general system.
As registration could not be enforced many Māori births and deaths were not registered.
Registers were also established to record overseas marriages and war deaths covering all wars since WWI.
Later registrations provide more information to researchers than earlier ones, however there is still a lot of useful information to be gathered from the early records.

If you have New Zealand ancestors, this is certainly a site worth checking.

New to Ancestry

New records are being continually added to the Ancestry Database. So even if you have looked there previously, it may be time to re-check the database.
Just in the last two months many Swedish & Belgium birth records have been added, plus Dutch & Danish records and various German records in their original languages.

On the English side –
London, England, Marriage Licences, 1521-1869 added in February 2009
The England & Wales, Birth Index: 1916-2005 – was updated in January, along with the England & Wales, FreeBMD Birth Index, 1837-1915

Also added from New South Wales were -
New South Wales, Australia, Registers of Convicts' Applications to Marry, 1826-1851
And New South Wales, Australia, Certificates of Naturalization, 1849-1903

You can use the Ancestry database free of charge in the Library – just ring 9976 1743 to make an appointment.

BDM Indexes

We have been spoiled with our access to on-line indexing for births, deaths and marriages in NSW. We can look up births from 1788 to 1907, deaths from 1788 to 1977 and marriages from 1788 to 1957. Victoria teases us with a search facility then charges to look at the results. ACT, Northern Territory, South Australia and Tasmania do not have searchable on-line records, but Queensland and Western Australia are now on-line. Queensland has records available for births 1829-1914, deaths 1829 – 1929 and marriages 1829 – 1929. Western Australia has birth indexes from 1841 – 1932, death indexes from 1841 – 1953 and marriage indexes from 1841 – 1932. The Archives Office of Tasmania does have some on-line indexes, but these are limited, and births deaths & marriage records (up to 1900) are split between here and the Registry of BDM (after 1900)

Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness

I came across a great little website the other day called “Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness”
Their volunteers have agreed to do a free genealogy research task at least once per month in their local area as an act of kindness. While the volunteers of Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness (RAOGK) have agreed to donate their time for free, you MUST PAY the volunteer for his/her expenses in fulfilling your request (copies, printing fees, postage, film or video tape, parking fees, etc.).

RAOGK is a global volunteer organization. With over 4000 volunteers in the U.S. and many international locations, including Australia, they have helped thousands of researchers. Volunteers take time to do everything from looking up courthouse records to taking pictures of tombstones. All they ask in return is reimbursement for their expenses (never their time) and a thank you.

Do you need help? Are you looking for someone in another location or with particular expertise? Or would you like to volunteer? Visit the website to find out more!

Blacksheep Ancestors

There are a number of websites devoted to the Blacksheep in the family.
Black Sheep Ancestors.com provides links to search prison records, insane asylum records for the US as wellas for the UK. There are also numberous links to historical court records, execution records and biographies of famous outlaws and criminals across the US, Uk and Canada.

The International Black Sheep Society of Genealogists (IBSSG) is an Association of Genealogists who have found "blacksheep ancestors" in their direct family lines, or under the "One Degree Rule" of the Society. The purpose of the Society is to discuss family blacksheep in order to learn more about them and share information about your "Black Sheep" with other members of the IBSSG! Many times having a Black Sheep in the family leads to a family "wall of silence" and research into the family becomes very difficult. Their Goal is to help find alternate routes to information sources, and to "normalize" the view of the blacksheep as a person, who has a place in the FACTUAL history of the family, without regard to behaviors.
Remember, the acts may be embarrassing to others in your family, but within the Society, you are not alone! Many have similar situations, and can relate (actually many are related) to the problems in doing this research.

Griffiths Valuation

Ever tried to find out anything about Irish Ancestors? If the answer is ‘YES’, then you will probably know about Griffiths Valuation. The Primary Valuation was the first full-scale valuation of property in Ireland. It was overseen by Richard Griffith and published between 1847 and 1864. It is one of the most important surviving 19th century genealogical sources. The Library holds the index to Griffiths Valuation of Ireland 1848 – 1864 on CD-ROM, but there is now a website to make searching easier.
http://griffiths.askaboutireland.ie/gv4/gv_start.php?version=text_only

IGI continued

Taking up where I left off last time – Hugh Wallis has made an exhaustive search of the likely ranges of IGI batch numbers and created a database of those numbers and the source records that they apply to. For each batch he has extracted the church or chapel (if specified), town, county and country names and then organised them by country and county and created this freepages website . He has also included a hotlink from each batch number to the actual search engine provided at http://www.familysearch.org/, including the ability to enter the surname you are looking for. This makes it very easy to search all the batches for a particular geographic location using just the last name you are searching for - something that is not possible directly from the LDS site without doing a lot of typing.
Hugh has found over 50,000 different batch numbers, which shows the enormity of the task that has been undertaken by the LDS and for which we as genealogists should be immensely grateful.
There are a few issues that researchers should take into account when using the IGI.
1. The International Genealogy Index (IGI) does not cover all parish records and you need to ascertain the coverage.
2. Some material on the IGI is the result of private researchers whose veracity is not known and is unsourced.
3. There are problems with Welsh records due to misunderstandings about the English surname / patronymic name mix.
4. The IGI has converted all dates to the Gregorian System which came into effect in 1752 in the British Empire.
These are not problems unique to the LDS Church Family History Centres and indeed all good researchers will always try to verify material they locate by accessing original material.

IGI

I had a strange request the other day about IGI records. Someone assumed the Library had them all on fiche. It appears there was some confusion as to what the IGI numbers actually were.
IGI stands for the International Genealogical Index, which is a partial index to vital records from around the world. It is one of the world’s largest collection of genealogical records. Information comes from individual research and original records. The majority of the names are from records of people who lived between 1500 and 1885. The index contains:
The names of millions of deceased persons from throughout the world.
Dates and places of births, christenings, marriages, and other events.
Latter-day Saint ordinance information.
Some of the information may have come from microfilm copies of the original records. Because the original records may have been updated by the record custodians, you may find additional, more accurate information in the original records. You may also be able to obtain official copies of the original records by contacting the appropriate record custodian.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (often referred to as the LDS) has made the International Genealogical Index (the "IGI") available on the internet at http://www.familysearch.org/ and provided a very effective searching capability. However, it is not always easy to locate your ancestors (even if they are there in the IGI) using the search mechanisms provided at that site. This is because a search by last name only is not permitted unless you search within a single batch of records at a time or, at minimum, across the entire country (not even a single county let alone a town). If you have a rare name this might be OK but what if you are looking for Smith or Jones?
There are the standard warnings about relying on the IGI - as with any secondary source it should only be used as a finding aid and the primary source material should be referred to for definitive information. There ARE mistakes but, nevertheless, used properly it is indispensible.
The LDS has organised the records in the IGI into 'batches'. These batches relate to how and when the information was extracted from source material. This is where Hugh Wallis comes to the rescue at his site http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~hughwallis/IGIBatchNumbers.htm , but more of that another time.

Terminology

Have you noticed while researching your family history that in Australia we refer to Births, Deaths and Marriages, with these life events in alphabetical order, while in other places such as the UK, they refer to Births, Marriages and Deaths, in chronological order of the life events. What difference does it make?

Well it could make a quite a bit of difference if you are trying to find websites, but have inadvertently put in the letters the wrong way round.

Have you checked out http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/ for UK births, marriages & deaths? Does it come close to http://www.bdm.nsw.gov.au/ NSW births deaths & marriages?

Curious Fox

I was alerted to a curious little site recently, which may appeal to the curious out there. It’s called Curious Fox, a UK site, which is a village by village contact site for anybody researching family history, genealogy and local history in the UK and Ireland. http://www.curiousfox.org.uk/

Every UK county, town and village has a page for family history, local history, surname and genealogy enquiries. You can search to find your own family village or town. You can find neighbouring villages and it even has maps – great maps, and maps from different time periods for the same village.

To do a family name search you need to register. This is free of charge, but there is an option to subscribe to the website for further information and service. Costs are small, but it helps to fund the site, without the use of banners and other affiliate links. The registration is to protect members privacy and stop spam mail.

Certainly worth a look if you have ancestors from the UK or Ireland.