Showing posts with label probate records. Show all posts
Showing posts with label probate records. Show all posts

Friday 22 February 2019

South Australia probates, historical society journals & other news - Genealogy Notes 1-15 Feb 2019

This is late as a dreaded lurgy has been stalking me for the past couple of weeks - not sick enough to stay in bed but enough to slow me down. So all energy has gone into commitments and I am just realising that tutoring two family history related classes at U3A is a bit full on. Still I have enjoyed the interest and motivation coming out of the writing family history class. Everyone has a really great project to work on.

Conferences

As an ambassador for the Waves in Time Conference in May, I will shortly be bringing you some blog posts about the speakers. We have a range of questions we are asking each person. We will get to know a little more about them and their areas of expertise.

My favourite question is why someone became interested in family history. Sometimes it is quite roundabout. Should be fun and starting soon.


Resources

I was excited to see that FamilySearch have added South Australian probate records. There are over 45,000 indexed names but no images according to the FamilySearch newsletter. But when I looked there were images and of course, the documents contain more information than the index. It is a series of probate and administration books which include transcribed wills rather than the ecclesiastical files themselves. Still better than nothing.

Another plus for me was the addition of Hampshire Parish Registers 1538-1980. Hoping to take a few family lines further back. Over 2 million names and again the newsletter indicated no images. I have Hampshire families and when I looked at the collection, there was an image symbol next to the entry. But when you click on it, there was a message saying it was not available at this time. Some of the entries also said it was available at a family history centre or an affiliated centre. If I can find enough references it would be worth the trip.

The Royal Australian Historical Society Journal is now available online via Trove. These journals have interesting articles on people, places, subjects and as the Society is based in New South Wales, anyone with NSW families should have a look.

The Royal Historical Society of Queensland's journal has been available for sometime via Text Queensland although the index is on the RHSQ's website. The Royal Historical Society of Victoria journal is available via State Library Victoria. Some journal articles can be discovered through Trove but I also like to check journal indexes and browse contents.

The Chyebassa (image courtesy State Library Victoria)
What's Coming Up?

There are several talks coming up in March and April starting with the Queensland Family History Society education seminar Taking Your Australian Research Further. I'm giving two talks on making the most of archives and other resources. The Chyebassa  was the ship my great grandfather Herbert William White came out to Queensland on. I have found some fascinating snippets on all my Australian families and these will be illustrating my talks at the seminar. It is amazing what is out there when you look.

Janice Cooper is the other speaker. It will be held at Gaythorne in Brisbane on 2 March. Hope to see you there.

U3A and my writing project will also keep me busy. I just need to shake my lurgy and get some more energy. Until next time, happy searching.


Saturday 7 June 2014

Genealogy Notes 30 May - 7 Jun 2014 Probate records and other things

Winter snuck up on me and the last week simply passed me by. It is not really winter here as I still have my daily swim when home although it is getting a tad cooler in the pool. To try and get into a wintry mood I even made my favourite curried ham and pumpkin soup but we all agreed it was a bit warm to be having soup.

Not like Canberra  where we lived for a few years and I will be heading to next week for a few days. There is a National Archives of Australia WW1 advisory committee meeting and I will be taking the opportunity to have a look at where we will be launching National Family History Month this year. Not long now till August so I hope societies, libraries and archives are putting all their August events into the NFHM web calendar. A great way to attract newbies and even old timers to your events. I also have some catch up with friends dinners and coffees and tossing up whether to go to the National Library of Australia or the Australian War Memorial.

But that is next week - so what made me forget to write up my Diary this week. Well I did finally get my orchid house and we spent a bit of time deciding where to put it and moving my orchids. The weather has been glorious and we have made quite a few more changes to our fruit orchard and palm tree forest.

Time spent indoors saw me renew my subscription to the Cornish Association of Queensland and I managed to get back into my 52 Weeks of Genealogical Records in 2014 personal blog challenge. Week 17 is all about Court Records and I have no shortage of personal examples there! I also finished my talk on Australasian probate records for the Queensland Family History Society which was today. A 9.00 am start is a challenge when you live outside of Brisbane but I managed to get there just in time.

First speaker was Saadia Thomson-Dwyer from Queensland State Archives talking about all the wills and intestacy records they have and how to access them. It was a perfect introduction to my talk which looked at the rest of the Australian States and Territories and New Zealand which have similar records. My presentation is as usual on the Resources page of my website, scroll down to Presentations.  Ann Swain followed with UK and Northern Ireland and there is quite a difference between the various countries with Scotland quite different from England and Wales. I must check out the National Archives of Ireland and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland for some of my Irish families as quite a lot has gone online since I last looked. There was morning tea, a lucky door prize, books for sale and time to catch up and chat with old friends. I think there was almost a 100 people there so a great day and I know what they will all be doing for the rest of this long weekend.

Tomorrow we are heading back to Brisbane for the History Alive festival at Fort Lytton which should be really good. I love their advertising - one place, two days, 2000 years of history. There are lectures, reenactments, people going around in everything from medieval wear to colonial uniforms including the American civil war plus an interesting range of food options too.

Monday I am planning a clean up the study day as when things get busy I just stack things - piles of journals to read, a list of emails to answer, online journals and newsletters to read and while doing the preparation of my probates talk I found all kinds of new information on the various websites and in Trove (love the new version 6.1) and Papers Past. That all needs to be added into my family history database.

I have also ordered some new book titles from Unlock the Past and there are quite a few titles that I simply want to sit down and read, not just browse. They should arrive next week just in time for my trip to the Caloundra Family History Research who have invited me up to talk at their June meeting. The Caloundra group have the most amazing purple shirts and I really wanted to join them but couldn't find a house we wanted on the Sunshine Coast. It's not far up the highway from Bribie Island so maybe I can go to some of their meetings!

It is Saturday night and I am home all alone. But when you do genealogy you are never really alone because there will be genie friends on Twitter, Facebook, Google + who will be able to share any genealogy happy dance should I discover anything super exciting from all the probate links I noted today. Happy researching and next Diary will be Wednesday before I head off to Canberra.